Short answer. One is the better choice if you want to answer your agents by voice or text from a Mac or an iPhone, today, with no waitlist. Vakr is the better choice if answering agents is the easy part for you and the hard part is deciding whether their work is safe to merge. I make Vakr, so read this with that in mind.
What One is, and what it does well
One describes itself as one place to see, answer and talk to all your coding agents. Agent questions and finished work collect in an Inbox. You reply there, or you send a request by voice or text and One routes it to the right agent. It is not a coding agent itself. Your agents run on the subscriptions you already pay for.
Things I think One does well:
- It is on your phone now. There is an iPhone and iPad app in TestFlight beta with notifications, and a web page for other phones.
- Voice. You can talk to your agents. Vakr has nothing like this.
- Servers that outlive your laptop. You can connect up to 8 Linux servers by pasting one command. Their agents stay reachable from your phone when the Mac is off, and One says traffic to those servers is end-to-end encrypted and the server opens no port.
- Careful small touches. Every answer waits 2 seconds so you can press Escape to undo, and One shows a receipt of what it did after it acts on a request.
One thing to know before you start: for One to answer, stop or message an agent, that agent has to run inside herdr, a free, open-source terminal for coding agents. Agents in other terminals still show up in One, and you answer them where they are.
One and Vakr side by side
| One | Vakr | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An Inbox for agent questions and finished work, with voice and text requests routed to your agents | A Mac app that tracks your Projects and agents, and checks agent work before you merge |
| Price | Free: 25 requests a day to One's AI. Pro: $12.99 a month ($6.99 the first month) or $119.88 a year, after a 3-day trial. Lifetime: $229 once, a limited edition | Free on your own Machines. Pro $99 a year, not on sale yet. Founding licence $149 once. Everything unlocked during early access |
| Licence | Not stated on the site | Not open source. Early access builds only |
| Platforms | macOS 13 or later. iPhone and iPad in TestFlight beta. A web page for other phones. Linux servers | macOS 15 or later. A Linux VPS can join as a Machine |
| Agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi, Omp, Amp and Grok | Claude Code and Codex natively, and about 22 more over ACP, OpenCode among them |
| Where your code goes | Agents run on your Mac and servers. Each request sends your words, a screenshot and recent agent activity through One's server to AI providers. One says the server keeps no copy. Sign-in with Apple or Google | It stays on your Mac. Paired Machines talk directly over your own network. No account |
| Checks on agent work | A receipt of what One did with your request, and a 2-second undo. I couldn't find checks on the agents' code itself on the site | Tests first with tamper detection, claims checked against what ran, and, when you ask for it, an agent from another vendor trying to break the diff (on every run with Pro) |
| Across several computers | Mac, iPhone and up to 8 Linux servers feed the same Inbox | Pair another Mac or a Linux VPS with a code |
Pick One if…
- You want a native iPhone app with notifications today.
- You like the idea of speaking a request and having it routed to the right agent.
- You run agents on Linux servers and want to reach them from your phone when your Mac is asleep.
- You already use herdr, or are happy to move your agents into it.
Pick Vakr if…
- Review is your bottleneck. Vakr is built around one promise: agent work you can merge without reading every line.
- You want the agent to write failing tests first, read a few short tests yourself, and know the agent cannot change them afterwards.
- You want "all tests pass" checked against the command the agent ran and its exit code, with the merge held when the two disagree.
- You want nothing to pass through anyone's server and no account to make.
What Vakr does not do
- It needs a Mac. macOS 15 or later. A Linux VPS can join as a Machine, but the app itself runs only on a Mac.
- It is in early access. There is a waitlist, and you cannot download it today.
- There is no iPhone app. Your phone gets a page over Tailscale. One is ahead here.
- It is for one person. No team features.
If that list does not rule Vakr out for you, the waitlist is at vakr.app.
Checked on 10 October 2026. Every fact about One above comes from getone.one as it read that day.
Questions
Is Vakr a One alternative?
Partly. Both give you one list for everything your agents are waiting on. One goes further on reach: voice, an iPhone app, servers. Vakr goes further on trust. If you only need the list, One is ready now.
Which costs less?
It depends on what you use. One's free tier allows 25 requests a day to One's AI, and Pro is $12.99 a month or $119.88 a year. Vakr is free on your own Machines with no caps on agents or runs. Vakr Pro will be $99 a year and is not on sale yet.
Can I use One and Vakr together?
I have not tested them side by side, so I will not promise it. They overlap on the list of waiting agents.
Guides to working with coding agents, with or without Vakr: the blog.