OpenWork for enterprise: governance, perimeter, and the open-source alternative

01What OpenWork Enterprise adds

OpenWork Enterprise starts from the free, open-source desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux where agents work on local files, then adds a control plane, Den, that provisions inference and manages members, teams and access. The enterprise tier documents SAML SSO and SCIM provisioning, a full audit trail exportable to a SIEM, desktop policies and version controls, usage and spend analytics per member, and white-labeling. A company runs a managed private instance the vendor operates, or self-hosts the stack in its own VPC, and it can point inference at AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, OpenRouter or models in its own VPC (OpenWork Enterprise, checked October 2026).

02What a company has to provision

OpenWork's controls center on each member's computer: which skills, plugins and model access a seat receives, which app versions the team allows, and which people may use which model. Work runs where the app runs, on the machine in front of each person, and a hosted cloud computer is an optional add-on at $50 per member per month. A company buys seats and, if it wants work off the laptop, cloud computers; it brings model keys or pays for managed inference as an add-on at $10 per person per month. Past five people, the Team tier is $10 per seat per month, and the enterprise controls are a separate tier on top (OpenWork pricing, checked October 2026). The OpenWork for teams page covers the governance side of the rollout.

03Who rents and who owns

Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector in one git repo you own. Its governance sits in the platform rather than the desktop app, so a rule applies to a session whoever started it, whether a person, an agent or a trigger. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. Self-host is free. One isolated sandbox per session. Each session has its own isolated machine and branch. Session work reaches main through a change request. The code is public at Kortix on GitHub, so a reviewer reads exactly what the company runs, and the self-hosting guide lists what the instance puts on disk.

04The controls a review asks about

A company reviewing either tool gets asked the same questions, and Kortix answers each with a mechanism a reviewer can check. Identity: SAML 2.0 single sign-on and SCIM 2.0. Access: per-resource permissions for people and agents. Roles, groups, and an audit trail. Approval gates you set. Off until you set them. Session work reaches main through a change request. Merge is default-deny for agents. Every action is recorded. Reading, exporting and streaming the audit log depend on the plan. Secrets are encrypted at rest with a key per project. Connector credentials are brokered server-side and never enter the machine. The OpenWork vs Kortix comparison shows the same facts as a table.

05Which one a company picks

OpenWork fits a company that wants to keep its AI stack on employee machines, values a local-first desktop app, and is willing to subscribe to a control plane for SSO, SCIM and audit. Kortix fits a company that wants the perimeter, the configuration and the review to be its own: the platform self-hosts for free, the whole company is a repo a reviewer can read, and every change lands as a change request a person approves. The pricing page covers what each option costs, and the FAQ answers the questions a procurement call raises.