smolanalytics vs Autonoma.
An open-source testing platform where AI agents navigate your app end-to-end and catch regressions on every PR, with no test code required.
Autonoma or smolanalytics?
Pick Autonoma if you want the platform open source, self-hosted for free, and you already build a preview environment for every pull request. Pick smolanalytics if you want to run one sentence against a URL tonight without installing a GitHub App, and you would rather pay $19 a month for 100 tested pull requests than buy credits.
| smolanalytics | Autonoma | |
|---|---|---|
| How a test is written | One English sentence in a markdown file. No selectors, no page objects, no fixtures, no code to maintain. | Plain markdown with YAML frontmatter, the same shape, generated by a planner you run with npx. |
| What it takes to start | A URL and a sentence. No account for the first run, no GitHub App, no preview environment to build, and nothing written into your repository. | Install the GitHub App, then a preview environment per pull request, and an Environment Factory endpoint for seed data. |
| Price | $19/month with 100 tested pull requests included, then 10c each. 14-day trial at those limits, no card. The agent runs on your own Anthropic key, billed to you and never resold. | 100K credits free, then $100 per 150K credits with optional auto top-up and no minimum. No credit card required to start. |
| Self-hosting | Not offered. The runner is an npm package you run anywhere; the verdicts land on a hosted project page. | Free forever, with no limits. Self-hosting needs PostgreSQL, Redis and Temporal. |
| Licence | Commercial, closed. The CLI is published on npm. | Business Source License 1.1, converting to Apache 2.0 on 23 March 2028. |
| Cost of a run that passes | A passing run is recorded and replayed with no model call at all. The agent returns only when the recording stops fitting. | The docs describe an agent exercising the app in a real browser on every run, and no caching or replay stage. |
| What a red run means | Five verdicts kept apart: passed, failed, stale, errored, flaky. Only failed is a claim about your app. | Not stated on the pages checked. |
where Autonoma is the better pick
Autonoma is open source and free to self-host, which we are not, and that alone decides it for anyone who needs the runner inside their own network. They also do something we deliberately do not: they build the environment. Their GitHub App reviews every pull request on a live preview with seeded data, so their agent tests the branch rather than whatever URL you hand it. If you have no staging URL and no preview deployments, they solve a problem we hand back to you.
where smolanalytics is
Nothing to install before the first verdict. One npx command against a URL that is already running gives you a pass or a fail with no account, no app on your repository and no environment to build first. After that, the economics differ: a passing run here becomes a recording that replays with no model call, so a stable suite costs almost nothing to keep green, and the meter is a tested pull request rather than a credit balance you have to translate.
How it works walks the loop from the sentence to the comment on the pull request, and the docs have the flags, the suite format and the CI step.
Pro $19/mo, 100 tested pull requests included, after a 14-day trial at Pro limits with no card. full pricing, including overage →
One sentence, on your app, tonight.
Point it at a URL that is already running and describe what should work. The first run uses the agent; once it passes it is recorded, so every run after that replays with no model at all.