The best AI agent for startups
By Marcell Havlik, founder of TODO for AI · Updated
A funded team of five to fifty, shipping fast, watching burn. One agent on everyone's machine and one pooled bill, not a tool per department. Here is how 30 tools score against what this job actually needs, and where each one fits.
Key takeaways
- Top pick. TODO for AI ranks first of 30 AI agents for startups, at 98% fit, followed by n8n (76%) and OpenHands (70%).
- What decides it. For startups the ranking weights long-running work and beyond code highest.
- Models. TODO for AI runs any provider, Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok or a local Ollama model, on one plan. Pricing: free plan (Claude Sonnet only), then Starter $20, Pro $100 or Ultra $200 a month with any provider included.
- Benchmark. TODO for AI scored 89.9% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 with Opus 5.5 (high) (own harness, 80/89 tasks, 2026-10-08; not an official leaderboard submission).
- Not for you if. If your engineers are the only AI users and will stay that way, a per-seat coding tool for that team is simpler to buy and defend. Breadth only pays once non-engineers use it.
What startups actually need done
At startup scale the buying question changes from "which tool is best at this task" to "how many tools are we going to run, and what happens to the bill at forty people". Per-seat pricing for occasional users, and one subscription per department, is how that gets expensive without anyone deciding it should.
So this ranking weights team controls, pooled cost and model freedom alongside capability. The winner should be usable by engineering and by go-to-market, on one budget, without betting the company on a single model vendor.
One tool the whole company can use beats four tools each department defends at renewal.
Per-seat licences for people who use it twice a month are how AI budgets quietly double.
Roles, approvals and audit become real requirements somewhere around the tenth hire.
The best model changes every few months. Locking the company to one vendor is a bet you do not need to place.
Scored for startups
| Rank | Tool | Fit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  TODO for AIA funded team of five to fifty, shipping fast, watching burn. One agent on everyone's machine and one pooled bill, not a tool per department. | 98% |
| 2 |  n8nTechnical teams who want automation they can self-host and extend in code. | 76% |
| 3 |  OpenHandsTeams that want an open, self-hosted autonomous coding agent. | 70% |
| 4 |  OpenClawTechnical people who want a self-hosted assistant in their chats and are happy to operate it. | 69% |
| 5 |  NotionTeams whose work already lives in Notion and who want agents to maintain it. | 67% |
| 6 |  Hermes AgentTechnical users who want a self-hosted agent that learns them over time and lives in Telegram, Discord or the terminal. | 65% |
| 7 |  ClickUpTeams already running ClickUp who want agents inside their existing boards. | 64% |
| 8 |  LindyOps and go-to-market teams automating repeatable processes without writing code. | 60% |
| 9 |  LinearEngineering teams who want issues, cycles and coding agents on one board. | 59% |
| 10 |  AsanaOperations teams who want repeatable intake and routing automated inside Asana. | 57% |
| 11 |  Copilot CoworkCompanies already standardised on Microsoft 365 who want an agent inside Outlook, Teams and Office. | 57% |
| 12 |  GitHub CopilotTeams whose work lives on GitHub and who want agents attached to issues and pull requests. | 55% |
| 13 |  MakeTeams who want Zapier-style automation with more control and a lower per-run cost. | 53% |
| 14 |  Claude CoworkClaude subscribers who want autonomous document, research and browser work without leaving Anthropic. | 52% |
| 15 |  GumloopMarketing and ops teams automating AI-heavy research, enrichment and content pipelines. | 50% |
| 16 |  monday.comTeams already running monday boards who want agents acting on those boards. | 50% |
| 17 |  CursorEngineers who want AI inside the editor while they type. | 49% |
| 18 |  ManusPeople who want polished research, decks, sites or short videos from one prompt, mostly in a vendor cloud. | 47% |
| 19 |  ZapierConnecting SaaS tools with reliable trigger-to-action plumbing. | 47% |
| 20 |  AiderDevelopers who want a lightweight, transparent CLI pair programmer. | 46% |
| 21 |  AirtableTeams whose work is structured records and who want internal apps and agents on top of them. | 46% |
| 22 |  Claude CodeDevelopers whose work lives in a repo and who are all-in on Anthropic models. | 45% |
| 23 |  OpenAI CodexTeams already on ChatGPT Plus or Pro who want GPT-native coding. | 44% |
| 24 |  ChatGPTAnyone who wants one excellent assistant for research, writing and everyday questions. | 43% |
| 25 |  ClineVS Code users who want an open agent with their own keys. | 43% |
| 26 |  OpenCodeDevelopers who want a free, hackable terminal agent and already hold API keys. | 43% |
| 27 |  TrelloSmall teams who want a simple shared board and nothing more. | 39% |
| 28 |  MotionPeople whose problem is deciding when to do the work rather than doing it. | 37% |
| 29 |  Base44Small businesses and non-technical builders who want an internal tool or simple app live quickly and cheaply. | 36% |
| 30 |  LovableNon-developers and product people who want a working web app prototype without writing code. | 36% |
How we weighted it
Every tool carries one set of scores across 6 dimensions, used on every page of this site. A page for startups does not rewrite those scores, it weights them. Here is every weight, including the ones turned down:
We build one of these tools, so treat this as an editorial argument rather than a measured verdict. The weights are all above and each tool's underlying scores are on its own comparison page, precisely so you can disagree with them.
The others worth knowing
Fair-code workflow automation you can self-host, priced per whole workflow run.
Open-source autonomous software agent with a self-hosted or cloud workspace.
Open-source personal agent that runs on your own machine and answers in WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and 20+ other chats, bring your own keys.
The docs-and-databases workspace, with Custom Agents that run on schedules and triggers inside it.