Omnara is an open-source agent deployment and runtime platform, officially positioned as an open-source alternative to Claude Managed Agents. Its core goal is to let developers use a single API to deploy and run stateful agents in the various environments users and teams already use, without being locked into a single vendor.
Purpose
Omnara is used to move agents from prototype to production. The official documentation notes that a prototype agent may take only an afternoon, but a production-grade agent requires platform support, and most teams eventually build it themselves. Omnara claims to provide "out-of-the-box" platform capabilities so teams can launch agents without building their own platform team. It targets two scenarios: building agent experiences for end users, and building agents for internal teams.
Main capabilities
- Unified API and multi-model support: A stateful agent API can drive agents to run in the work environments where users and teams are. The platform is model-agnostic, supporting OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, LiteLLM, or any compatible endpoint, and also supports open-source models such as GLM, Qwen, and DeepSeek via OpenRouter or self-hosting, with the ability to switch models when price or quality changes.
- Deployable to multiple interfaces: The officially listed forms that can be built include agents in product dashboards, Slack agents within teams, dedicated agent workflows (such as code review), and interactive CLI experiences.
- Deploy via prompts: Paste a prompt into a coding agent to deploy a production-ready agent for users or teams. The official documentation shows several examples, such as an on-call assistant with read-only access to AWS and code, a coding agent in Slack, daily summaries, a browser automation agent, a video generation agent that uses Remotion to generate MP4s, and more.
- Persistent state and recovery: Agents do not lose work on failure and consume no compute resources when idle. Omnara stores agent state in a persistent event log, enabling it to run for long periods and recover from severe failures. The official philosophy is "the log is the agent" and "serverless agents."
- Run on any machine: Can run with no machine (running entirely on Omnara), on machines purchased with Omnara credits, or connect your own Blaxel, Daytona, or Unikraft Cloud accounts, or run on macOS or Install the Omnara daemon on a Linux laptop, VM, or container. The daemon makes outbound connections and requires no open ports.
- Access control: Supports requiring human approval for high-risk tool calls, storing credentials as encrypted, scoped secrets, providing role-based access for people and API keys, and auditing every action through an append-only history.
- Agent-facing API and integrations: Provides a REST API, TypeScript SDK, and CLI, from which agents can be launched, guided, and observed, and their behavior changed mid-conversation by submitting a new configuration without redeployment. Supports connecting MCP servers and reusable skills to access data, and provides first-party integrations for Slack, Discord, and GitHub. The official page also shows Linear, Supabase, and PostHog connected.
How to use
Officially, agents can be deployed via "one prompt": paste the prompt into a coding agent, and the coding agent will ask a few questions and then create the agent. Developers can also embed and control agents through the REST API, TypeScript SDK, or CLI. There are three machine options: no machine, buy a machine with Omnara credits, or connect your own cloud account or install the daemon.
Use cases
Suitable for teams that need to embed agents in their products, build internal agents for their team (such as a Slack coding assistant, on-call assistant, or daily summary), build specialized workflows (such as code review), or build browser automation or video generation agents. Also suitable for organizations that want to avoid lock-in to a single vendor for models, machines, cloud, data, and pricing.
Limitations and costs
The platform itself is free. You can bring your own model keys and machines (free), or pay as you go: models at the provider's token rates, machines billed by active time using Omnara credits. Self-hosting is free. Omnara uses the Apache 2.0 license, and the code is at github.com/omnara-ai/omnara. Omnara Cloud provides a hosted service, and all data can be queried via API; if data needs to remain on your own infrastructure, you can self-host or deploy in your own cloud. The availability and pricing of specific model providers and machine providers may change with third parties, and the official materials do not give specific price figures.
