OpenClaw is a strong open-source assistant that runs on your own machine and lives in your chat apps; Kortix is the open-source OpenClaw alternative for teams that need to run a whole company's agent work. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: your agents, their skills, your company memory and every connector live in one git repo you own, each session runs on its own isolated computer, and the work lands as a change request a human reads before it merges.
What OpenClaw is, and where it stops
OpenClaw is an open-source AI assistant that runs on your own computer and meets you in the chat apps you already use, from Discord, iMessage, Slack and Teams to Telegram and WhatsApp. It installs on macOS, Linux and Windows, keeps state, memory and credentials on your hardware, and treats models and agent harnesses as plugins you can swap (openclaw.ai). The project is stewarded by the OpenClaw Foundation, an independent 501(c)(3), and released under the MIT licence with no paid tier and no hosted service (OpenClaw on GitHub).
As a personal assistant, OpenClaw is strong, and a shared team deployment is the same Gateway with different configuration. It is still one assistant on one machine. Tools run on the host unless you configure sandboxing, and configuration lives in a Gateway and a workspace on your hardware. A company that runs many agents across many teams needs configuration it can review and roll back, an isolated machine per task, per-tool rules, and a gate before anything lands, which is what Kortix is built to provide.
What Kortix gives a company instead
Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System and the leading open-source alternative to Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. It gives a company the parts a single-assistant setup leaves out.
- One git repo that is the company. Agents, skills, memory, connector config and triggers are text files you own, so you can grep the whole company, diff any change and roll it back (Kortix docs).
- Every tool the company runs on. Kortix connects 3,000+ apps and any MCP, OpenAPI, GraphQL or HTTP API, brokers connector credentials server-side, and lets you set allow, ask or block on each tool call down to its arguments (kortix.com).
- Any model, your keys. Pick Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint per agent, per session or per message, and bring your own API key.
- A real agent harness on its own computer. Each session boots an isolated Linux machine with your repo and tools already on it, thousands run in parallel, and the agent plans, uses tools and finishes multi-step work.
- One gate to land work. Start agents from the web, Slack, Teams, email, mobile, CLI or API, or from a cron schedule or webhook, and the work lands as a change request a human reads as a diff.
Kortix and OpenClaw side by side
Licence and platform facts checked October 2026.
| Source | Where it runs | Your configuration | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kortix | Open source (Elastic License 2.0) | Your VPC, on-prem or managed cloud | One git repo you own | Company agent work with a review gate |
| OpenClaw | Open source (MIT) | Your own machine and a team Gateway | Gateway and workspace on your hardware | Personal and team assistant in chat |
How to start with Kortix
- Install the CLI:
curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install | bash - Scaffold a project with
kortix init. It writeskortix.yamlplus your agents and skills. - Ship it with
kortix shipto push the repo and bring it live, or runkortix self-host startfor one Docker Compose stack on your laptop, a VPS, your VPC or on-prem. Managed cloud is the zero-setup option (Kortix on GitHub).
Questions teams ask when switching
Is Kortix a drop-in replacement for OpenClaw? No. OpenClaw is a chat-first personal and team assistant, and Kortix runs company agent work. Many teams keep OpenClaw for personal automation and run Kortix for the work that has to be governed.
Do I have to leave OpenClaw to use Kortix? No. Kortix is a separate system that can run alongside OpenClaw. Your OpenClaw Gateway stays on your machine, and Kortix runs the company work from a repo you own.
Can I self-host Kortix? Yes. Kortix is open source (Elastic License 2.0): self-host, read and modify the code. kortix self-host start runs the stack on your laptop, a VPS, your VPC or on-prem network, and the managed cloud is there if you want zero setup.
For the full technical difference, read the Kortix vs OpenClaw comparison.
Start with the open-source alternative: try Kortix, self-host it for free, or run it in the managed cloud.