AI tool comparison
Azure Foundry Hosted Agents vs Craft Agents OSS
Which one should you ship with? Here is the side-by-side panel verdict, pricing read, reviewer split, and community vote comparison.
Developer Tools
Azure Foundry Hosted Agents
Per-session isolated agent sandboxes on Azure — scale to zero, any framework
50%
Panel ship
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Community
Paid
Entry
Microsoft Azure's Foundry Agent Service now offers Hosted Agents in public preview — per-session isolated compute sandboxes purpose-built for running AI agents at scale. Each session gets its own container with a persistent filesystem, internet access (optional), and a Python environment pre-loaded with common agent dependencies. Sessions spin up in seconds and terminate — and stop billing — the moment the agent task completes. The design is framework-agnostic: it officially supports LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Claude Agent SDK, and Microsoft's own Agent Framework, with others planned. This removes one of the most awkward parts of deploying agents in production: figuring out where they actually run. The persistent filesystem per session means agents can read and write files across their task without external storage configuration. Pricing is $0.0994/vCPU-hour and $0.0118/GiB-hour — competitive with Lambda/Cloud Run for bursty workloads. The service is available in six Azure regions at launch. For enterprises already invested in Azure, this is a compelling "we just figured out the infra" moment. Independent developers can also use it without an enterprise agreement.
Developer Tools
Craft Agents OSS
Open-source desktop app for running AI agents across 32+ integrations
75%
Panel ship
—
Community
Free
Entry
Craft Agents OSS is a free, Apache-licensed desktop app and CLI framework for building and running AI agents against real-world workflows. Built by the team behind the Craft.do document editor, it connects to 32+ integrations out of the box — MCP servers, REST APIs, Google Workspace, Slack, GitHub, and local filesystems — with no manual configuration required. It supports Anthropic, OpenAI, Google AI, and any OpenAI-compatible backend in a single unified UI. The core idea is an "agent canvas" where users drag tools onto a timeline, set up triggers, and watch agents execute multi-step workflows in real time. It also ships a headless server mode, making it usable as a remote agent runner in CI/CD pipelines or staging environments. The project hit 4,200+ stars on GitHub within 24 hours of launch. What distinguishes Craft Agents from similar tools like Dify or n8n is its desktop-first UX and tight integration with Claude's computer-use and agent loop capabilities. The Craft team has deep product experience — this isn't a weekend hack but a polished tool with well-documented agent primitives, error handling, and rate limiting built in from day one.
Reviewer scorecard
“Framework-agnostic hosted sandboxes with scale-to-zero is exactly what I need for deploying agents without maintaining my own Kubernetes cluster. The per-session isolation eliminates a whole class of security concerns I was handling manually. The Claude Agent SDK support means I don't have to choose between Azure and my preferred model.”
“This is the missing middle layer between raw SDK calls and fully managed platforms. 32 integrations with zero config and a headless mode means you can drop it into an existing workflow in under an hour. Apache 2.0 license is the cherry on top.”
“Public preview means production instability risk and pricing could change significantly at GA. The cold start time for agent sessions needs to be benchmarked against real workloads before committing. And six regions is thin coverage for global deployments — wait for broader availability.”
“The 4k stars in 24 hours is impressive but hype-fueled. We've seen a dozen 'universal agent frameworks' launch in the last year — most get abandoned once the novelty wears off. Wait to see if the integration library is actively maintained before betting your workflows on it.”
“The battle for agent infrastructure is the next cloud wars — and Microsoft just answered Google Cloud's agent platform launch with their own. Framework-agnostic compute that works with any model provider is a smart commoditization play: own the infrastructure layer, let the model battle play out above it.”
“Desktop-native agent runners are the 2026 equivalent of the browser as the universal platform. The Craft team's product pedigree and the open-source architecture mean this could become the go-to scaffolding for agent apps the way Electron became the default for desktop apps.”
“This is squarely developer infrastructure — not directly relevant to creative workflows unless your studio runs its own agents. Worth watching for the ecosystem tools that get built on top of it.”
“Finally, an agent tool designed by people who actually care about UX. The drag-and-drop canvas is the first agent builder I've used that didn't feel like configuring XML. Non-engineers on my team were running their own agents in about 20 minutes.”
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