Alternatives / Claude Managed Agents
Looking for an open source Claude Managed Agents alternative? We compared 3 open source agent orchestration platforms by license, self-hosting, governance, sandboxing, and agent support. They let you run and supervise AI agents on your own infrastructure, and one of them uses a source-available license with hosting restrictions.
Written by Maxime DERAME
Last updated:
| Alternative | Best for | License |
|---|---|---|
| Paperclip | Running teams of agents like a company, with budgets and governance | MIT |
| Multica | Managing coding agents as team members (source available) | Multica License (Apache-2.0 + conditions) |
| Omnigent | Policy and sandboxing over Claude Code, Codex, and others (alpha) | Apache-2.0 |
We looked for open-source tools that overlap with managed agent platforms: running long-lived AI agents, giving them tasks and tools, and supervising cost, safety, and results. We verified each project's license, recent activity, stars, and self-hosting in its repository. These tools orchestrate agents rather than provide a model, so you bring your own models and agent CLIs, and we flag source-available terms and early-stage status. See our methodology for the full criteria.
Paperclip, Multica, and Omnigent coordinate agents you already use, such as Claude Code, Codex, or custom agents, and you supply the models and API keys. They do not replace Anthropic's hosted runtime and models, so costs and model access come from your own providers.
Multica uses the Multica License, which is Apache-2.0 with additional conditions. You can use it commercially inside your own organization, but you may not offer it as a hosted service to third parties, even for free, or embed it in a commercial product without a commercial license from its company. It is therefore not standard open source.
Paperclip is the most complete orchestration layer, with org charts, goals, heartbeat scheduling, budget controls, tickets, and governance approvals, and it supports cloud and sandbox agents through providers such as e2b, Cloudflare, Daytona, and Modal. Omnigent adds policy enforcement, sandboxing, and shared real-time sessions over several agent harnesses, and Multica turns coding agents into team members with task queues and a skills library.
Paperclip is MIT and Omnigent is Apache-2.0. Multica is licensed under the Multica License, which is Apache-2.0 plus the conditions described above.
All three projects were updated within days of this update, and all are young: Multica was created in January 2026, Paperclip in March 2026, and Omnigent in June 2026. Omnigent describes itself as alpha, so expect breaking changes.
Claude Managed Agents is a hosted service tied to Anthropic's models and infrastructure: your agents, sessions, and data run in its environment and are billed by usage. Open-source alternatives let you run orchestration on your own servers, mix models and agent tools from different vendors, set your own governance and budgets, and avoid depending on a single provider, at the cost of operating the stack and securing it yourself.
| Alternative | Type | License | Self-hosted | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paperclip | Agent orchestration | MIT | Yes | Agent teams with governance |
| Multica | Agent project management | Multica License (Apache-2.0 + conditions) | Yes | Coding agent teams |
| Omnigent | Meta-harness | Apache-2.0 | Yes | Policy and sandboxing |
Want to run a team of agents with budgets and approvals
Paperclip is MIT-licensed with org charts, goals, budget controls, tickets, and governance approvals, self-hosted with no account required.
Want to manage coding agents like teammates
Multica provides task queues, skills, and runtime monitoring, but its license forbids offering it as a hosted service to third parties.
Want safety controls over existing agent CLIs
Omnigent is an Apache-2.0 meta-harness that adds policy enforcement, sandboxing, and shared sessions over Claude Code, Codex, and more, but it is in alpha.