CraftBot Live vs
self-hosting CraftBot.
CraftBot is open source. You can run it yourself, or we can run it for you. Here is the honest version of that choice.
The short answer: CraftBot Live is for people who want a 24/7 AI agent without owning a server, and self-hosting is for people who want total control and local data. Same agent, same skills, same Living UI, different place to run it. You can start on one and move to the other at any time.
| CraftBot Live (hosted) | Self-hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Sign up and click once. Your agent is online in seconds. | Rent a VPS or dedicate a machine, install Docker and Python, configure the runtime, connect your LLM key. |
| Uptime | Always-on by default. Your agent keeps working when your laptop is closed. | As good as your machine and your monitoring. A crashed process stays crashed until you notice. |
| Cost | Free plan at $0. Paid plans from $19.90/month for dedicated compute. | VPS from a few dollars a month, plus your own time for setup and maintenance. |
| Updates | Applied for you by the team that builds CraftBot. | You pull releases and migrate yourself. |
| Isolation & persistence | Each agent runs in an isolated instance; memory, files, and skills persist across restarts. | Whatever you configure. Full responsibility, full flexibility. |
| Control | Managed environment. You control the agent, not the host. | Total control: hardware, network, custom system access, anything the machine can do. |
| Data locality | Data lives in your isolated cloud workspace. | Data never leaves your machine unless you send it somewhere. |
When self-hosting is the right call
We build the open-source agent first, so we will say it plainly: if your work requires the agent to touch local files and applications on your own machine, if your data must never leave your network, or if you enjoy running your own infrastructure, self-host. The GitHub repository has everything you need, and the same team answers questions in Discord either way.
When CraftBot Live is the right call
If what you actually want is the output, an agent that clears your inbox, produces content, does research, and runs tasks around the clock, then the server is overhead. CraftBot Live gives you an isolated, persistent instance with one click, live metrics, and updates handled for you. The Free plan exists so you can find out in under a minute whether CraftBot is useful to you.
Should I self-host CraftBot or use CraftBot Live?
Use CraftBot Live if you want an always-on AI agent without touching a server: setup takes seconds, uptime and updates are handled, and the Free plan costs nothing. Self-host if you need total control over hardware and network, want data to never leave your machine, or want the agent to access local resources. Both run the same open-source runtime, so you can switch later.
Do hosted and self-hosted CraftBot run the same software?
Yes. CraftBot Live runs the same agent runtime as the open-source CraftBot repository. Local skills, MCP servers, and Living UI work identically in both, and you can migrate in either direction.
Is self-hosting CraftBot hard?
It is standard self-hosting work: a VPS or spare machine, Docker, a Python environment, an LLM API key, and keeping the process alive. The GitHub repository documents the setup. If that sounds like a chore rather than a hobby, that is exactly what CraftBot Live removes.