Comparison · Checked 10 October 2026
Cambrian Core vs Agno
Both run agents on your own infrastructure, and they are built differently. Cambrian Core is a separate kernel your agents connect to. Agno is a Python framework with its own runtime. This page compares what each one documents. We have not run them side by side.
Side by side
How they differ
| Topic | Cambrian Core | Agno | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A kernel, written in Go, that your agents connect to over gRPC. Agents are written in Python with the SDK. | A Python framework for agents, served by AgentOS, a FastAPI runtime. | A separate kernel for many agents, or a framework inside your app. |
| Where it runs | On your infrastructure: the kernel plus a Postgres database. | AgentOS runs on your infrastructure, with databases you configure. | Both runtimes are operated by you. |
| Operator interface | Studio, a desktop app, and the CLI. Both connect straight to your instance. | The Control Plane, hosted by Agno, connects to your runtime from the browser. A self-hosted Control Plane is an Enterprise add-on. | Decide where your operators’ console should live. |
| Human approvals | Tools marked dangerous wait for an operator to approve or deny them, and each decision is recorded. Today, requests are raised on the streaming execution path. | Blocking approvals store a pending request that an administrator resolves through the API or UI. With role-based access, resolving needs the approvals:write scope. | Both can pause a run for a person. |
| Access control | Agents start with no tools; an operator grants each one. Tag-based rules on memory come with the commercial edition. | JWT verification, with per-endpoint scope checks when authorization is turned on, or a shared security key. | Compare the policies you would actually configure. |
| Licence | Core: Elastic License 2.0. Studio: AGPL-3.0. CLI and Python SDK: Apache-2.0. | Repository: Apache-2.0. | Read each licence against how you plan to ship. |
| Price | Core, Studio, the CLI, and the SDKs are free to self-host. No other prices published. | The framework is free. Control Plane Pro is $150 a month with three seats and one live connection; extra seats $30, SAML SSO $300. Enterprise is priced on request. | Agno prices as listed on 10 October 2026. |
| Benchmarks | Not run against Agno. | Not run against Cambrian. | We have not measured them on the same workload. |
FAQs
That depends on what you are building. If you want a framework inside your Python app, Agno is built for that. If you want a separate kernel that holds shared memory, access rules, and approvals for many agents, that is how Cambrian Core is built. We have not measured them against each other, so we make no performance claims.