Claude Managed Agents alternative
Claude Managed Agents gives you a hosted agent harness, sandboxes, and long-running sessions, on Claude models, on Anthropic's cloud. If you need a different model, a different deployment boundary, or a different cost shape, the options below are compared on the criteria that matter for a managed agent runtime: sessions, sandboxing, credentials, model choice, and deployment.
Claude Managed Agents is Anthropic's hosted runtime for agents. You define an agent (model, system prompt, tools, MCP servers, skills), an environment (the sandbox spec), start a session, and exchange events over a stream. Anthropic runs the agent harness (the loop that builds context, calls Claude, and executes tools) and bills session runtime plus tokens. For the full breakdown, see what Claude Managed Agents is.
The Claude Agent SDK runs the harness inside your own process. You get the loop and the tools, but persistence, sandboxing, recovery, and multi-tenant operation are yours to build. Managed Agents hosts all of that. The detailed trade-off is in Claude Agent SDK vs managed agents.
CMA is an orchestration runtime, so the alternatives below are judged as runtimes.
Rows are grouped by product shape in no particular order. Third-party details come from each vendor's documentation or repository as of November 2026.
| Option | Shape | Models | Self-host control plane | Open source | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenMA | Open managed agent runtime (meta-harness) | Multi-model: Claude, OpenAI, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, custom gateways | Yes: Node/Docker, Fly.io, Vercel (beta), Cloudflare | Apache 2.0 | Teams that want the CMA resource shape without Claude-only, Anthropic-hosted lock-in |
| TrueForge (TrueFoundry) | Open-source agent harness with sessions, HTTP API, approvals, and a chat UI | OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint | Yes: local SQLite, or Postgres + Redis via Docker Compose, Helm, or Railway | MIT | Teams that want a CMA-style harness with a bundled chat UI |
| Omnara | Open-source managed agent platform with a REST API and durable state | Any compatible model | Yes: Docker Compose with Postgres, Redis, and S3-compatible storage | Apache 2.0 | Teams that want agents on their own machines or third-party sandboxes |
| OpenAI Agents API | OpenAI-managed harness (Codex harness) | OpenAI | No, self-hosted sandbox only | No (Agents SDK is open source) | OpenAI-standardized teams that want a hosted runtime |
| Bedrock AgentCore / Foundry Agent Service | Hyperscaler-managed agent services | Cloud catalog models | No — provider-operated, inside your cloud account | No | Teams committed to AWS or Azure procurement and IAM |
| DIY on the Claude Agent SDK | In-process SDK you wrap yourself | Claude | Yes, you build it | SDK only | Small teams with one agent and strong platform engineers |
| LangGraph / CrewAI / AutoGen | Agent frameworks (libraries) | Multi-model | You assemble the platform | Yes (license varies by component) | Graph or multi-agent logic you will host yourself |
OpenMA mirrors the Claude Managed Agents resource model (agents, environments, sessions, events, vaults, memory stores) and adds an OpenAI Agents API adapter over the same sessions. Models, harnesses, sandboxes, databases, and queues are all replaceable adapters. See the feature-by-feature Claude Managed Agents vs OpenMA comparison.
TrueForge is TrueFoundry's MIT-licensed agent harness. TrueFoundry markets it as a Claude Managed Agents alternative and publishes a cost benchmark against CMA. Omnara is an Apache-2.0 managed agent platform with a REST API, durable state in Postgres, and a daemon that lets agents use your own machines. The open-source managed agents shortlist compares them on the criteria below.
The closest vendor peer: an OpenAI-managed harness with sessions and hosted or self-hosted sandboxes, on OpenAI models. If you want to switch vendors and stay on a vendor-hosted runtime, read the OpenAI Agents API vs OpenMA comparison.
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and Microsoft Foundry Agent Service suit teams already buying through AWS or Azure. Building on the Claude Agent SDK is fine for one agent, but you will rebuild sessions, sandboxes, recovery, and credential handling as you grow.
A replacement for Claude Managed Agents has to cover the same runtime work. Frameworks and coding agents solve other problems, covered in the AI agent platform & orchestration guide.
| Criterion | What a managed runtime provides | Common gap |
|---|---|---|
| Durable sessions | Conversation and progress survive process crashes and can be resumed later | Library frameworks leave persistence to you |
| Isolated sandbox | Tools run in a container or microVM, not in the API process | In-process SDKs run tools next to your app |
| Event log + streaming | Every step is recorded and streamable (SSE) for UIs and audit | Ad hoc application logs that cannot replay a session |
| Credential isolation | Secrets stay in a vault and are added to outbound requests, so tools in the sandbox do not hold them | Env vars inside the sandbox are readable by every tool |
| Model choice | Swap model per agent without rewriting the runtime | Claude-only or OpenAI-only services |
| Deployment control | Run the control plane where your data must live | Hosted-only services |
Open source matters for more than price: you can read the harness, audit how credentials are handled, and fork what does not fit. Compare candidates in open-source managed agents, or survey the wider field of open-source AI agents.
OpenMA runs on Node.js or Docker with SQLite, PostgreSQL, or MySQL. It also deploys to Fly.io, to Vercel (beta), and to Cloudflare with Durable Objects and R2. Why and how teams do this is covered in self-hosted AI agents, and the self-host docs have the setup.
Anthropic bills Claude Managed Agents as standard token usage plus a session-runtime fee measured while a session is running. Self-hosting replaces the runtime fee with your own infrastructure and operations cost, so whether it is cheaper depends on your usage and team. Model the numbers with the worked monthly pricing example.
Anthropic's engineering write-up describes Managed Agents as separating the brain (model and harness) from the hands (sandboxes and tools), explained in what Claude Managed Agents is. OpenMA applies the same split and lets you pick the model, the harness, and the sandbox provider.
If none of those apply, Claude Managed Agents is a well-built product and staying on it is a reasonable choice.
It depends on the constraint you are escaping. For model choice plus self-hosting with the same agents/sessions/events shape, an open managed runtime such as OpenMA fits. For OpenAI-only stacks, the OpenAI Agents API. For AWS or Azure procurement, the hyperscaler agent services. For one simple agent, the Claude Agent SDK may be enough.
Yes. OpenMA is Apache 2.0 and free to self-host. You pay for your own infrastructure and model provider. Frameworks such as LangGraph, CrewAI, and AutoGen are also open source, but they are libraries, so you still build the sessions, sandboxes, and recovery layer.
OpenMA's source is at github.com/openma-ai/open-managed-agents. It ships the agents, environments, sessions, vaults, memory stores, and an event stream, with Docker and Cloudflare deployment paths.
Yes. Moving off Claude Managed Agents does not mean moving off Claude. OpenMA can run Claude models with your own Anthropic key, alongside other providers.
OpenMA keeps the Claude Managed Agents resource shape, so most clients switch by changing the base URL. Coverage is tracked per endpoint in the compatibility matrix in the docs. Check the surfaces you rely on before migrating.
Plain-English overview of agents, environments, sessions, and events.
Session-hour and token costs with a worked monthly example.
Feature matrix and when each one wins.
Shortlist of open runtimes with the managed-agent shape.
Run agents on your own infrastructure.
Agents API vs Agents SDK vs an open multi-model runtime.
In-process SDK vs hosted harness, and when to migrate.
The runtime primitives every agent platform needs.
Step-by-step move of clients, sessions, and vaults.
