Compare
Hangar vs the alternatives.
How Hangar lines up against the platforms users name when they ask for an AI agent host or a single-purpose agent SaaS.
| Feature | Hangar | Modal | Railway | Journalist AI | 11x Alice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per-agent isolation | Dedicated Fly Machine per agent | Function-scoped containers (cold-start each call) | Shared service container | Multi-tenant SaaS, no isolation | Multi-tenant SaaS, no isolation |
| Built-in channels | Telegram, Discord, Slack, MCP, web, REST | None — bring your own webhook stack | None — bring your own webhook stack | Email + slack only | Email only |
| Wallet-billed LLM at provider cost | Yes — atomic cents-precision deduction | No — pay your own LLM bill separately | No | Bundled into per-seat pricing | Bundled into per-seat pricing |
| MCP server | Yes — at /api/mcp, scope-restricted PATs | No first-party server | No | No | No |
| OpenAPI spec | Yes — /openapi.json (3.1) | Partial — per-function exposure | N/A (no public API) | No | No |
| License | MIT — same code as the hosted plan | Proprietary | Proprietary | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Self-host path | Documented; one Postgres + Fly account | No | No | No | No |
| Custom code | OpenClaw (Node 20) and Hermes (Python 3.11) | Python only | Any language | No — closed product | No — closed product |
| Deploy time (first agent) | About 60 seconds | Seconds (cold start) but no prebuilt agent | ~5 minutes incl. service config | Minutes (form-driven onboarding) | Days (sales-led onboarding) |
| Pricing entry | Subscription + pay-as-you-go LLM | Pay-as-you-go compute | Pay-as-you-go compute | $49+/mo per seat | Custom (sales-led) |
When Hangar wins
- · You want a real VM per agent, not a shared queue or function.
- · You want channels (Telegram/Discord/Slack/MCP) wired in.
- · You want a wallet-billed LLM at provider cost, atomic cents.
- · You want a self-host escape hatch on the same code.
- · You want an MCP server out of the box for Claude / Cursor.
When Hangar isn't the right fit
- · You need raw, latency-critical inference (use Replicate/Together).
- · You're building a static workflow with no LLM step (use Zapier/Make).
- · You need browser-only execution (use a Chrome extension framework).
- · You need a non-Node, non-Python runtime today.
Want a deeper, named comparison?
Read the alternatives index for one-pagers per competitor with the same architecture / pricing / feature breakdown.