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CrewAI Alternative

CrewAI alternatives FAQ: an open-source system you own

Teams weighing CrewAI ask the same things: is it open source, is it free, and what replaces it when a whole company wants to own the runtime. Kortix is an open-source AI Operating System: your agents, skills, company memory, and connectors in one git repo you own.

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From a framework to a system

From a framework to a system you own

Kortix maps each part of an operating system to a file or a sandbox you can read, diff, and run yourself.

  1. 01
    The repo

    One git repo is the company

    Agents, skills, memory, connectors, and triggers are files in one repo you own.

    project layout
    A project is a git repowith kortix.yaml at its root.Agents, skills, memory, tools,triggers and connectors are files in it.
    Source: kortix.com/docs
  2. 02
    The session

    Each session runs on its own computer

    A session runs one agent in its own sandbox, on its own branch.

    session
    A session runs one agent in its own sandbox.The sandbox clones the repo and works on a new branch.The branch name is the session_id.
    Source: kortix.com/docs
  3. 03
    The gate

    A person approves what lands

    The agent opens a change request, and a person reviews the diff before it merges.

    change request
    The agent commits, pushes the session branch,and opens a change request against theproject's default branch.A person merges it.
    Source: kortix.com/docs
  4. 04
    The surfaces

    The same session starts anywhere

    A session starts from the web app, the CLI, Slack and Microsoft Teams, or the API.

    surfaces
    Web · CLI · Slack · Microsoft TeamsMobile · APISDK
    Source: https://kortix.com
FAQ

CrewAI questions, answered

Direct, sourced answers to what teams ask about CrewAI and what can replace it.

  1. Is CrewAI open source?

    Yes. CrewAI is an open-source Python framework, and its source is public on GitHub at crewAIInc/crewAI, so you can read, fork, and run it yourself. The company also sells a separate commercial control plane, the AMP Suite, for managed deployment, observability, and governance on top of the framework (crewai.com).

  2. Is CrewAI free to use?

    The framework is free to install and run on your own infrastructure; you pay only for the models and compute you use. The commercial layer is paid, though one part of it, the Crew Control Plane, is free to try (crewai.com).

  3. Is CrewAI still relevant in 2026?

    Yes. The CrewAI framework is under active release, with version 1.15.28 published on 2026-10-14 and 59,000+ stars on GitHub (checked October 2026) (crewAIInc/crewAI). Relevance depends on what you need: CrewAI is a framework for building agents, while a team that wants to own the runtime needs a system that runs them across the company, which the Kortix blog compares in detail.

  4. What is a good open-source CrewAI alternative a whole company can own?

    Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector in one git repo you own, with the agents working on real cloud computers. It is the leading open-source alternative to Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. The CrewAI alternatives page sets it against the rest of the field.

  5. Can Kortix and CrewAI be used together?

    They can coexist. Kortix runs its own harness, OpenCode; the CrewAI framework stays a separate engine. A CrewAI service that exposes an API is callable from a Kortix session as a connector, over MCP, OpenAPI, GraphQL, or raw HTTP (Kortix docs).

  6. Can you self-host an alternative to CrewAI?

    Yes. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network, and self-host is free (self-hosting). The self-host commands install and run the full stack on your own infrastructure (Kortix docs).

  7. Does the alternative need to be open source?

    No, an alternative does not have to be open source, though open source is what lets a team read, fork, audit, and self-host the system without asking a vendor. Kortix is open source, so the code, the agents, and the configuration are yours to run and change.

  8. How do you move the work from a framework to a system you own?

    There is no one-command importer; the move is a translation of files you already own. A Kortix project is a git repo with kortix.yaml at its root, so each CrewAI agent becomes an agent file plus a block in kortix.yaml, the tools it used become connectors, and its knowledge becomes memory files (Kortix docs). The framework or system guide covers what changes when the runtime moves.

  9. Can I move off CrewAI without losing my agents?

    Nothing is lost, because a CrewAI agent is already a definition you own: a role, a goal, a backstory, tools, and an LLM (crewAIInc/crewAI). In Kortix that definition becomes an agent file plus a block in kortix.yaml, so the behavior carries across and only the place it runs changes (Kortix docs).

  10. Which CrewAI alternative fits a team that wants to self-host?

    Kortix is built for that: self-host is free, and it runs on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. The self-hosting page has the stack, and Kortix vs CrewAI compares the two directly.

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