Open-source Claude Cowork alternatives you can run yourself

If you want the multi-step work Claude Cowork does, but you need the runtime, your files and your model keys to stay under your own control, the open-source alternatives below run that job on hardware you can inspect. Kortix is the open-source system we recommend, and it starts with one git repository you own. Five other projects do something narrower, and the choice comes down to where the work runs and who reviews it.

What Claude Cowork gets right, and where it stops short

Claude Cowork is Anthropic's hosted agentic product that carries Claude Code's architecture to knowledge work without a terminal. Give it a goal and it works across the folders and tools you choose, shows each step, and returns polished work for review. It keeps running when your laptop closes, schedules recurring tasks, splits large projects into parallel chunks, and opens sites in a browser inside its own side panel instead of yours. Plugins bundle skills, connectors and sub-agents for teams that want a specialist setup. (claude.com/product/cowork)

Cowork is available on paid plans (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise), with availability varying by surface, and it runs sessions in the cloud in beta. Those sessions and files are saved to your Claude account, and model access runs through a Claude account or your own Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud or Microsoft Foundry tenancy. Neither the Cowork product page nor the help article documents installing or operating Cowork on infrastructure you control, and neither publishes a source licence for it. (Anthropic Help Center)

That is the limit that matters here. A team that needs the software on its own metal, or a licence that lets it read and modify the code, cannot get either from Cowork.

Any replacement has to answer four questions that Cowork answers inside Anthropic's product: who operates the runtime, which models you may run, where your files and credentials live, and how an agent's work gets reviewed before it lands. Each option answers those differently, and the licence decides how much of the stack you can change. For a team that needs to own the runtime, these are the projects worth running.

Kortix, the open-source alternative we recommend

Kortix is the open-source AI Management System: your agents, the skills they share, your company memory and every connector as files in one git repository you own. Agents and skills are markdown, memory is plain files, and connectors and triggers are declared in kortix.yaml. The whole company is text you can grep, diff and roll back. (Kortix on GitHub)

Every Kortix session boots its own isolated Linux sandbox on a branch named after the session. The agent can install, run and break anything there, and only what it commits survives. Work reaches main through a change request a human reads as a diff and merges, and merge is deny-by-default for an agent. (Kortix docs)

What you own when you run Kortix

Kortix is model-agnostic. Pick a model per agent, per session or per message, bring your own API key, or use the ChatGPT or Copilot subscription you already pay for. Every model call routes through a gateway running inside your own stack, connecting Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Groq, xAI, DeepSeek, Mistral, Bedrock and OpenRouter. Connectors cover 3,000+ apps plus any MCP, OpenAPI, GraphQL or HTTP API, and credentials are brokered server-side so the raw key never enters the sandbox. (Kortix self-hosting)

You can self-host the whole control plane from one Docker Compose stack built from the same images as the managed cloud, with sandbox compute from Daytona by default or Platinum or E2B. kortix self-host start pulls the images from Docker Hub, and the same artifact runs on a laptop, a VPS or a cloud VM. Managed Kortix Cloud is the alternative: Free at $0 with 200 credits a month and one project, or Team at $40 per seat a month, checked October 2026 (kortix.com/pricing). Kortix is open source (Elastic License 2.0): self-host, read and modify the code.

Agents start from the web, Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, mobile, CLI or API, or from a cron schedule or signed webhook with nobody asking. The identity controls larger organizations ask for, including SAML SSO, SCIM directory sync, custom roles and audit read, require an enterprise key. (Kortix self-hosting)

If you would rather run the install yourself, the step-by-step self-hosting guide walks the Docker Compose setup from first command on, and the open-source AI agent platform round-up lines Kortix up beside the other self-hosted options.

The six options compared

The other five you can run

Eigent is an open-source Cowork desktop application built on the CAMEL-AI framework, and its repository positions it as a local, free alternative to Claude Cowork and Codex. It runs a multi-agent workforce alongside a single-agent harness, with a fully standalone local deployment and local model integration through vLLM, Ollama or LM Studio. It is model-agnostic across cloud APIs, enterprise gateways and local inference, and ships browser and terminal toolkits with MCP and skill integration. Its repository is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and lists SSO and access control under enterprise features. Pick it for a multi-agent desktop that runs locally under a permissive licence. (Eigent on GitHub)

OpenWork is a free, open-source desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, built on OpenCode, where agents work on your own files. Any model works: 50+ providers with your own keys, a ChatGPT sign-in, or local models through Ollama. Teams share skills and MCP servers, and the OpenWork MCP exposes those capabilities to Codex, Claude Code, Cursor and other agents without requiring the desktop app. The repository uses a directory-split licence: everything outside ee/ is MIT, while ee/ holds the Den control plane under the OpenWork EE License. That licence is public code, free for organizations up to five users, free to evaluate for 30 days at any size, and each release converts to MIT two years after publication. (OpenWork on GitHub)

Open Cowork is a free, open-source AI agent desktop app for Windows and macOS that wraps Claude Code, OpenAI, Gemini and DeepSeek models in a one-click installer. It adds VM-level sandbox isolation through WSL2 on Windows and Lima on macOS, a path-restricted fallback when no VM is available, built-in skills for PPTX, DOCX, XLSX and PDF output, and MCP connectors for browsers and Notion. It supports your own OpenRouter, Anthropic or other keys, and remote control through Feishu and Slack. Its repository is licensed under MIT. Pick it for an individual who wants one-click desktop automation inside a VM sandbox. (Open Cowork on GitHub)

Open Claude Cowork is an open-source desktop chat application powered by the Claude Agent SDK and the Composio Tool Router. It connects to more than 500 apps through Composio, and runs on the Claude Agent SDK or OpenCode. The repository documents persistent sessions, real-time streaming, tool visualization, skills, browser automation, scheduling and a companion messaging bot. Setup needs your own Anthropic API key and a Composio API key, and the repository is licensed under MIT. Pick it for a team already using Composio that wants a local Claude Agent SDK desktop client. (Open Claude Cowork on GitHub)

OpenClaw is an open-source AI assistant that runs on your own computer and meets you in Discord, iMessage, Slack, Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp and 20+ more channels. One local Gateway is the control plane for sessions, tools, events and channel connections, and state, memory and credentials live on your hardware. Models and agent harnesses, including Claude, Codex and local models, are swappable plugins. OpenClaw is stewarded by the OpenClaw Foundation and has no paid tier or hosted service. Its tools run on the host for the main session unless you configure sandboxing, and the repository is licensed under MIT. Pick it for a chat-driven local assistant whose state you keep. (OpenClaw on GitHub)

When to pick which

Pick Kortix when your team wants to own the control plane: configuration, shared memory and connector definitions as files in a repo you own, each session on its own isolated machine, and every change behind a human review gate. A local desktop app is the better fit for one person or a small team that wants no server to run and no review process to maintain; OpenWork and Eigent are built for exactly that reader. Claude Cowork remains the simpler choice for a team that wants a managed coworker inside the Claude ecosystem and will not self-host. For teams running real work across departments, Kortix is the pick: it is free to self-host and free to start, with Team at $40 per seat a month when you want managed cloud.

Keep reading

Kortix vs Claude Cowork weighs the two head to head, Kortix vs OpenWork covers the desktop option, and Claude Cowork alternatives looks at a different set of rivals. While you are weighing the hosted products, the Claude Cowork vs ChatGPT Work comparison sets the two side by side.

Start with one job and grow from there. Get started with open-source Kortix on managed cloud, or self-host it for free.