Comparison

Lobu is multi-tenant agent infrastructure. It handles sandboxing, persistence, platform delivery, and network isolation so you can ship agents to your users without building that plumbing yourself.

This page compares Lobu against alternatives for deploying agents to production.

At a glance

	Lobu	OpenClaw (direct)	DeepAgents Deploy	Claude Managed Agents
What it is	Self-hosted multi-tenant gateway	Single-user agent runtime	Hosted agent deployment (LangSmith)	Hosted managed agents
Multi-tenant	Per-user/channel isolation	Single user	Per-thread sandbox	Per-conversation
Platforms	Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Teams, Google Chat, REST API	CLI and API	API endpoints (MCP, A2A, Agent Protocol)	API
Embeddable	Mount inside Next.js, Express, Hono, Fastify	No	No	No
Self-hosted	Single Node process (BYO Postgres)	Single process	LangSmith hosted (self-host option)	Cloud only
Model support	Any provider via config	Any provider	Any LangChain-compatible provider	Anthropic only
Runtime	OpenClaw	OpenClaw	LangGraph	Claude
Network isolation	Gateway-mediated egress, domain filtering	Host network	Sandbox-level	Platform-managed
Secrets handling	Gateway proxy, workers never see credentials	Direct env vars	Environment variables	Platform-managed
MCP support	Proxied through gateway with secret injection	Direct	HTTP/SSE only	Yes
Agent Protocol / A2A	Not yet	No	Yes	No
Built-in evals	YAML eval framework with model comparison	No	No	No
Memory	Self-hosted Owletto plugin	Local	LangSmith APIs	Platform-managed
Scale-to-zero	Built-in idle timeout	Always running	Managed by LangSmith	Managed
Config format	`lobu.toml` + IDENTITY/SOUL/USER.md	CLI flags	`deepagents.toml` + AGENTS.md	Dashboard
License	Open source	Open source	MIT (harness), proprietary (hosting)	Proprietary

Memory benchmarks

Lobu’s bundled memory system is benchmarked against Mem0 and Supermemory on public datasets. Same answerer (glm-5.1 via z.ai), same top-K, same questions.

LongMemEval (oracle-50)

Single-session knowledge retention.

System	Overall	Answer	Retrieval	Latency
Lobu	87.1%	78.0%	100.0%	237ms
Supermemory	69.1%	56.0%	96.6%	702ms
Mem0	65.7%	54.0%	85.3%	753ms

LoCoMo-50

Multi-session conversational memory.

System	Overall	Answer	Retrieval	Latency
Lobu	57.8%	38.0%	79.5%	121ms
Mem0	41.5%	28.0%	66.9%	606ms
Supermemory	23.2%	14.0%	36.5%	532ms

See the memory benchmarks methodology for fairness guardrails and reproduction steps.

Sandboxing model

Lobu runs as a single Node process. Each user/channel gets its own worker subprocess that the gateway spawns on demand.

Single-process (BYO Postgres)

Uses just-bash (virtual bash) + Nix for reproducible packages. Each user gets an isolated virtual filesystem and bash session at ~50MB memory footprint. Tested at 300 concurrent instances on a single machine.

Subprocess boundary per user — child_process.spawn per session; SIGKILL recoverable.
Workspace persistence — ./workspaces/{agentId}/ survives gateway restarts.
Egress through gateway proxy — workers run with HTTP_PROXY=http://localhost:8118; allowlist/blocklist + LLM egress judge enforced at the proxy.
Linux production hardening — when systemd-run is available, the worker spawn becomes a transient unit with MemoryMax, CPUQuota, IPAddressDeny=any (kernel-level egress), capability drops, and NoNewPrivileges. macOS dev hosts fall back to plain spawn.

Comparison to other sandboxing approaches

	Lobu	E2B	DeepAgents Deploy
Isolation	Subprocess + just-bash + isolated-vm + (Linux) systemd-run	Firecracker microVM	Daytona/Modal/Runloop
Self-hosted	Yes (single Node process)	Cloud API	LangSmith hosted
Network control	Gateway proxy + domain filtering + IPAddressDeny on Linux	Sandbox-level	Sandbox-level
Startup time	Instant (in-process gateway, subprocess workers)	<200ms	Varies by provider
Persistence	Directory per agent	24hr max	Thread-scoped, resets on restart
Per-user isolation	Yes (per-channel/DM subprocess)	Per-sandbox	Per-thread

MCP proxy and credential isolation

Workers call MCP tools through the gateway. The gateway resolves ${env:VAR} secrets and injects OAuth tokens before forwarding to the upstream MCP server. Workers never see credentials — they receive opaque proxy URLs.

	Lobu	DeepAgents Deploy	Claude Managed Agents	Direct MCP
Secret injection	Gateway proxy resolves at request time	Environment variables	Platform-managed	Direct env vars
OAuth management	Lobu handles token refresh	Manual	Platform-managed	Manual
Transport support	HTTP, SSE, stdio (proxied)	HTTP/SSE only (no stdio)	Yes	All
Worker sees credentials	Never	Yes (env vars)	N/A	Yes
Audit trail	Gateway logs all MCP calls	No	No	No

For compliance-bound deployments, agent code never touches API keys or OAuth tokens — even if the agent is compromised.

Why Lobu for on-premise

Hosted platforms (DeepAgents Deploy, Claude Managed Agents) require sending your data, prompts, and agent memory to a third party. For regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government) or organizations with data residency requirements, this is a non-starter.

Lobu runs entirely on your infrastructure:

Data stays in your network — Postgres, workspaces, and memory are all self-hosted
No external dependencies — the gateway, workers, and MCP proxy run on your machines
Network-level isolation — workers use gateway-mediated egress, with kernel-level loopback-only enforcement on Linux production hosts
Credential separation — secrets never leave the gateway process
Audit everything — gateway logs all LLM calls, MCP tool invocations, and network requests
Air-gapped compatible — with local LLM providers (Ollama, vLLM), Lobu can run fully disconnected

When to use Lobu

Lobu is the right choice when you need to give multiple users their own agents:

SaaS products — embed agents in your app where each user gets isolated persistence, tools, and context.
Internal teams — deploy a single bot to Slack or Teams where every employee gets their own sandboxed agent.
Customer support — agents that handle tickets autonomously with human-in-the-loop approval gates.
Managed agent services — operate agents for clients with per-tenant isolation and network controls.

If you need a single personal agent for yourself, use OpenClaw directly.

Lobu vs OpenClaw

Lobu and OpenClaw are complementary. OpenClaw is the agent runtime — the execution engine that runs tools, manages sessions, and talks to LLM providers. Lobu is the infrastructure layer that deploys, isolates, and delivers that runtime to multiple users.

OpenClaw (~800k LOC) was designed as a single-tenant, single-user system. Production deployments need multi-tenant isolation, platform routing, credential separation, network control, and scale-to-zero — concerns OpenClaw doesn’t have opinions about.

Capability	Lobu	OpenClaw
Architecture	Multi-tenant gateway + isolated workers	Single-tenant, single-user
Platform delivery	Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Teams, Google Chat, REST API	CLI and API
Worker isolation	Subprocess + just-bash + (Linux) systemd-run hardening	Runs on host
Secret handling	Gateway proxy injects credentials	Direct env vars
Egress control	Domain allowlists via HTTP proxy	Host network
Scale-to-zero	Built-in idle timeout and wake	Always running
Deployment	Single Node process (BYO Postgres)	Single process

Inside each Lobu worker, the full OpenClaw runtime runs untouched. Lobu rewrites only the gateway layer (~40k LOC) to be multi-tenant.

Lobu vs DeepAgents Deploy

DeepAgents Deploy (LangChain) deploys a single agent to a hosted LangSmith server with 30+ API endpoints.

Where they overlap: both use a TOML config file, support MCP, and offer model-agnostic provider selection.

Where they differ:

	Lobu	DeepAgents Deploy
Hosting	Self-hosted (you own the infra)	Hosted on LangSmith
Multi-tenant	Per-user sandboxed workers	Per-thread sandbox
Platform delivery	Native Slack/Telegram/WhatsApp/Discord/Teams/Google Chat	API endpoints only
Embeddable	Yes — mount in Node.js frameworks	No
Network isolation	Gateway-mediated domain filtering	Sandbox-level
Protocols	MCP	MCP, A2A, Agent Protocol
Evals	Built-in YAML framework	Not included
Memory ownership	Fully self-hosted (Owletto)	LangSmith APIs (self-host option)
Runtime	OpenClaw	LangGraph

Choose DeepAgents Deploy if you want zero-ops hosted deployment and need A2A multi-agent orchestration.

Choose Lobu if you need multi-tenant isolation for your users, platform-native messaging, embeddability in your app, or full infrastructure control.

Lobu vs Claude Managed Agents

Claude Managed Agents is Anthropic’s hosted agent platform.

	Lobu	Claude Managed Agents
Model support	Any provider	Anthropic only
Self-hosted	Yes	Cloud only
Open source	Yes	Proprietary
Platform delivery	Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Teams, Google Chat	API
Embeddable	Yes	No
Network isolation	Domain-filtered egress	Platform-managed
Evals	Built-in	Not included

Choose Claude Managed Agents if you’re committed to Anthropic models and want a fully managed experience.

Choose Lobu if you need model flexibility, self-hosting, platform delivery, or the ability to embed agents in your product.

Lobu vs building it yourself

What “we’ll build it ourselves” entails:

Sandboxing: per-user worker lifecycle with workspace persistence
Platform adapters: Slack Events API, Telegram long-polling, WhatsApp webhooks, each with their own auth flows
Credential isolation: proxy layer that injects secrets without exposing them to agent code
Network policy: domain-filtered egress through a gateway proxy
MCP proxy: secret injection, OAuth token refresh, and routing for MCP servers
Scale-to-zero: idle detection, teardown, and wake-on-message
Eval framework: automated quality testing across models
Admin UI: per-agent configuration, connection management, status monitoring

Lobu handles all of this out of the box. The gateway is ~40k lines of TypeScript that took months to build and harden.