Open Computer Use: review, pricing, security and alternatives

What Open Computer Use does

Open Computer Use belongs to the computer use family: agents that see the screen and drive the keyboard and mouse of a computer or phone. On our grid it ranks #15 of the 17 projects of this family listed in the directory.

Who is Open Computer Use for?

It is for people who want to automate desktop software with no API, by driving the screen as a person would. Typical tasks people give it:

• chain actions in legacy business software
• copy data from one application to another
• test a desktop application

Access and human control

According to its documentation, Open Computer Use can:

• control the screen, keyboard and mouse

We could not establish whether it asks for human approval before sensitive actions: test it first on an unimportant account or folder.

Open Computer Use pricing

The code is free, under the Apache-2.0 licence.

Getting started with Open Computer Use

1. Install it: the project ships as a Python package (install with pip or uv). The exact command is in the repository README.
2. Create an API key with the model provider and put it in an environment variable, never in a shared or versioned file.
3. Give it a first playground with nothing at stake: a test folder, a secondary account or a throwaway project. Only open your real accounts once you have seen how it behaves.
4. Give it a short, checkable task, review the result and its action log, then raise the difficulty step by step.

Security: risk level

An agent that controls the computer has the same rights as you: run it in a dedicated virtual machine.

Points found for Open Computer Use:

• Sensitive access: it can control the screen, keyboard and mouse, with no established default human approval.

Three habits: least privilege (minimal rights, dedicated keys), human approval for irreversible actions, a sandbox for code execution. The AI agent security check reviews your setup in a few minutes.

Project activity and releases

Created on October 31, 2024, the e2b-dev/open-computer-use repository has 2,389 stars, 268 forks and 11 open issues, with 115 commits in total. It received changes this month.

Over the last 52 weeks: 2 commits, an average of 0 per week.

The project publishes no numbered releases on GitHub: you install it from the main branch or a package manager.

Open Computer Use vs other computer use

GitHub stars of the best-rated open-source projects in the computer use family. Stars measure attention, not quality: a heavily promoted project collects them fast, a specialised tool will have few.

Open Computer Use and other computer use at a glance

The 7 best-ranked agents in the same family, 7 of them open source. The score out of 100 only applies to open-source projects; for proprietary services we show the published entry price. A dash marks information the documentation does not state.

How we rated it

Score: 48/100, computed only from public, verifiable data, with no subjective testing or partnership:

• Adoption 17/40: 2,389 stars on a log scale (40 points from about 200,000).
• Activity 16/30: last commit less than a month ago, 0 releases in six months, 2 commits in a year.
• Framework 15/30: licence, default human approval, self-hosting, model choice and documentation site.

The score does not say whether the agent will succeed at your tasks: it measures how solid the project is. The full grid is on the method page.