Team chat with AI agents: Slack alternatives built for agents, compared

• Keep your chat and add agents if switching is too costly: Slack with Claude Tag^{1, 2}, Google Chat with coworker agents³, or Teams with Copilot agents^{4, 5}.
• Ando if you want hosted, Slack-like chat where agents don't take a seat^{6, 7}.
• Dock if you want ready-made business agents with their own computers^{8, 9}.
• Buzz, CircleChat or agentes-chat if you want open source on your own servers^{10, 11, 12}.
• Leverage Computer if your agents are Claude Code or Codex and you want to run many of them across the team. Sessions sit in shared threads, keep going with laptops closed, start from webhooks and pull requests, and pass every tool call through rules you set^{18, 13, 20, 15}.

1. Agent identity. Is the agent a member with its own account, or a bot acting as whoever asked?
2. Approvals and audit. Does a person approve risky actions, and is there a record?
3. Where agents run. A vendor sandbox, a computer per agent, or your own servers.
4. Coding agents. Can Claude Code or Codex work here, or only the vendor's agent?
5. Pricing model. Per person, per workspace or per use, and whether agents cost seats.

Slack with Claude Tag and agent apps: best if moving off Slack is not an option

Strengths

• Agents are @mentioned "just like any other member of the team" and can take actions such as creating channels and sending DMs¹.
• Claude Tag lets anyone in a channel hand work to @Claude, which posts a checklist in the thread as it goes².
• Admins "control which agent apps can be added"¹.

Weaknesses

• Slack's agents page shows no prices and still says Agentforce in Slack "will be available soon"¹.
• Claude Tag is a public beta for Claude Team and Enterprise, and its sandbox is discarded when the conversation goes idle².

Price. Slack Pro $7.25 per user a month billed yearly¹⁶; Claude Tag usage is billed to your Claude organization².

Google Chat with coworker agents: for Google Workspace companies

Strengths

• A coworker agent gets "its own Workspace account, including an email address, calendar, Drive, and presence in your company directory"³.
• Colleagues add it "to a Chat space" or @mention it, and every action is written to an audit trail attributed to the agent³.
• Agents run in an Agent Sandbox with its own network boundary³.

Weaknesses

• Google's announcement gives no price and no general-availability date for coworker agents³.
• Permissions are approved by security administrators; the post does not describe per-action human approval³.

Price. Not stated in the announcement³.

Microsoft Teams with Copilot agents: for Microsoft 365 companies

Strengths

• Agents built in Copilot Studio can be published to Teams, with "approval gates" and audit logs that flow into Microsoft Purview⁵.
• SharePoint agents can be added "to a Teams chat"⁴.

Weaknesses

• Several licenses stack: Microsoft 365, Copilot, and Copilot Studio credits^{4, 5}.
• Copilot Studio agents need an Azure subscription⁵.

Price. Microsoft 365 Copilot $30.00 per user a month, paid yearly, on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan⁴. Copilot Studio credit packs are $200.00 a month for 25,000 credits⁵.

Ando: for hosted, Slack-style chat with agents as members

Strengths

• "Agents are true participants", and you can bring your own cloud or local agents⁶.
• "Agents are unlimited on every plan, and none of them take a seat"⁷.
• Slack import is listed as a feature⁶.

Weaknesses

• "Access is by request"⁶.
• Agent permission scopes and the audit trail are on the Business plan⁷.

Price. Free $0 with 90 days of history; Pro $7.25 and Business $15 per person a month, billed yearly⁷.

Dock: for ready-made business agents

Strengths

• "Specialized agents with skills, tools, and a computer"⁸.
• Channels launched on 29 October 2026: "Agents are members" you tag to wake⁹.

Weaknesses

• Its pages do not mention approvals, audit or self-hosting^{8, 9}.
• Priced per person, with a cap on cloud agents per plan⁸.

Price. Starter $40, Standard $100 and Scale $200 per person a month, with 5, 10 or 20 cloud agents⁸.

Buzz: for an open, agent-first workspace you run yourself

Strengths

• Agents are "members, not bots" with their own keys and audit trail¹⁰.
• Works with Goose, Codex and Claude Code today¹⁰.

Weaknesses

• "Not finished": approval gates, mobile apps and Git hosting are still in progress¹⁰.

Price. Open source, Apache 2.0¹⁰.

CircleChat: for self-hosted chat with approvals

Strengths

• "Anything risky (deploys, payments, external email) pauses for your approval"¹¹.
• "Every run, message, and artifact is logged"¹¹.
• MIT-licensed; "Self-host stays free forever"¹¹.

Weaknesses

• Cloud plans limit the number of agents (3 on Starter, 10 on Team)¹¹.

Price. Cloud $29, $79 or $199 a month per workspace; self-hosting free¹¹.

agentes-chat: for self-hosted chat where agents use Claude Code

Strengths

• Agents have "a role, an owner and a budget" and "ask before anything sensitive"¹².
• On a connected computer, an agent can use Claude Code or Codex on the plan signed in there¹².

Weaknesses

• "Codex is still in testing", and the desktop and phone apps are in beta¹².
• AGPL-3.0-only, which matters if you modify and host it for others¹².

Price. Self-hosting is free; cloud pricing is not in the README¹².

Leverage Computer: for teams that run Claude Code or Codex every day and want to run much more of it

We make Leverage Computer. This section uses our own public pages, and it says where Leverage Computer does not fit.

Leverage Computer puts spaces, threads and DMs next to agent sessions. Mention Leverage in a thread to hand it work; each session runs Claude Code, Codex or Grok Build on its own VM^{18, 13, 14}.

Strengths

• A computer per session, with a terminal, a browser and a persistent disk, that keeps working when laptops close¹³.
• Approvals on every tool call. Set each tool to allow, ask or deny; approve, edit the arguments or deny; every call is recorded with who asked and who approved¹⁵.
• Shared memory in Git for the workspace, each space and each person¹⁹.
• People are free. You pay for agent time, not seats¹⁷.
• Your own environments. Set variables and secrets and pick them per space or session. A secret can be added to HTTPS headers by the network, so its value never enters the VM¹³.

Where Leverage Computer is the wrong choice

• You need to self-host. Leverage Computer does not offer it; CircleChat, agentes-chat and Buzz do.
• Your agents are mostly non-coding helpers. Dock, Ando or your suite's built-in agents may fit better.
• You want chat add-ons for people. Slack's app directory is far larger. In Leverage Computer, agents act on app events and webhooks²⁰ and call apps through the gateway¹⁵.

Price. $0.50 per agent hour on a Standard machine; storage and people are free¹⁷. You do not need to move off Slack to start¹⁸.

Inside one Leverage Computer session

People

Watch it live

Steer or queue a message

Approve tool calls

Share as viewer or collaborator

Environment

Variables per space or session

Secrets added at the network

Values hidden from transcripts

The computer

Its own VM with sudo

Claude Code, Codex or Grok Build

Sleeps when idle

terminalbrowserfilesdisk

Git

Every turn committed

Team memory and skills

What it makes

Pull requests with Auto-fix

Private preview links

Published pages

Scheduled and event runs

1. Can you move chat at all? If not, add agents to Slack, Google Chat or Teams^{1, 3, 4}.
2. Must it run on your servers? CircleChat, agentes-chat or Buzz^{10, 11, 12}.
3. Are the agents writing code? Look for a real computer per agent, approvals and coding agents you already use: agentes-chat, Buzz or Leverage Computer^{10, 12, 13}.

• Slack alternatives for engineering teams, compared
• AI agent workspaces for engineering teams, compared
• How to run Claude Code for a whole team: your options compared
• Work in the open
• AI governance built in
• Pricing
• All comparisons