OpenWork is a genuinely good open-source desktop app. It is not, and does not try to be, a company-wide agent system. So when a team searches for an "OpenWork alternative", the useful question is not which desktop app is nicer. It is whether you have outgrown a desktop app at all.
What OpenWork actually is
OpenWork is the free, open-source alternative to Claude Cowork and Codex: a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux where AI agents do real work on your own files. It is built on OpenCode and works with any model — 50+ providers, your own API keys, or local models through Ollama. The desktop app is MIT-licensed and needs no OpenWork account to run locally. Teams share skills and MCP servers, and larger organizations add OpenWork Den, the control plane that lives under ee/.
Two facts decide the fit. Your files stay on your machine, and cloud is optional. And the org control plane is under the OpenWork EE License — a source-available license that is free for organizations of up to five users, with each release converting to MIT two years after publication. That is a real, usable product for a small team. It is also the boundary where teams start looking for something else.
OpenWork is the right pick when the unit is one person
Choose OpenWork when a solo operator or a small team wants a point-and-click workspace: install a desktop app, point it at a folder, bring a model key, and let an agent work on local files. It runs on your laptop, it needs no server, and your data never has to leave the machine. If that is the job, OpenWork does it well and integrating anything heavier would be overkill.
The limits appear as the team grows. The desktop is the unit of work, so there is no shared company memory that every teammate's agent reads from and writes back to. Configuration lives per machine rather than in one reviewable place. And governance — who may run which tool, on which data, with what approval — is not the desktop's job.
Kortix is the OpenWork alternative when the unit is the company
Kortix is the open-source alternative to Claude Cowork and OpenAI ChatGPT Work, and the open-source AI Management System. Where OpenWork keeps a workspace on your desktop, Kortix runs the organization. Agents, skills, company memory, connector config and triggers live as files in one git repo you own — versioned, diffable, and shared by everyone. Every session boots its own isolated Linux machine on its own branch, and work reaches the main branch only through a change request a human reads as a diff. Kortix is open source (Elastic License 2.0) — self-host, read and modify the code.
It is model-agnostic: any provider with your own API keys, your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for. It reaches 3,000+ apps plus any MCP, OpenAPI, GraphQL or HTTP API, with connector credentials brokered server-side and allow/ask/block rules down to a single tool call. You can self-host free on a laptop, a VPS, your VPC or on-prem, or use the managed cloud.
The comparison that decides it
| Kortix | OpenWork | |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Open source — Elastic License 2.0 | Desktop app MIT; ee/ control plane under the OpenWork EE License |
| Unit of work | The company: one git repo of agents, skills, memory and connectors | The desktop workspace on your machine |
| Where it runs | Self-host on laptop, VPS, VPC or on-prem, or managed cloud | Desktop app; team control plane self-hosted if you add Den |
| Models | Any provider, your own keys, or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for | 50+ providers, your keys, or local models via Ollama |
| Human gate | Every change lands through a change request a human reads as a diff | In-app reviews and approvals |
| Team setup | Per-resource permissions for people and agents, audit trail, SAML SSO | Invite teammates, manage access from OpenWork Den |
| First step | `curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install \ | bash` |
How to choose
- One person, local files, no server. Stay on OpenWork. It is the lighter setup and it is free.
- A team that wants shared skills and an org control plane, but stays desktop-first. OpenWork plus Den, within its five-user free tier or a subscription.
- A company that wants agents, memory and connectors governed in one repo it owns. Pick Kortix. The configuration is a repository you can diff and roll back, sessions run on their own machines, and nothing changes without human review.
- Both sound plausible. Start from the unit of work. If more than one person's agents should learn from the same memory and answer to the same rules, a desktop app is the wrong unit.
The full, sourced comparison — feature by feature, with each project's licence and self-hosting path — lives at openworkalternative.com. Start there if you are deciding, and get started with open-source Kortix when the answer is a company system.
Top comments (0)