Verdict: these rarely belong on the same shortlist. T3 Code is a free MIT control surface for agent CLIs you bring yourself, with clients on six platforms and no team product. Factory sells Droid plus model and tool policy, identity, telemetry, remote execution, and deployment patterns including hybrid and fully airgapped, on an individual ladder starting at $20 a month with no free plan. Pick T3 Code if the missing piece is a window. Pick Factory if the missing piece is governance. Pick Continuum if the missing piece is governance but you want to keep the agents you already trust.
- T3 Code is a surface over agents you own. Factory is an agent plus the platform around it.
- T3 Code is free and MIT. Factory's individual ladder starts at $20/mo with no public free plan.
- Factory's real product is governance and deployment: policy hierarchy, telemetry, hybrid and airgapped patterns.
- T3 Code has no teams, no SSO, no admin, no support contract, and says so. That is a positioning choice, not a defect.
- Migrating between them is not a swap. One replaces a window; the other replaces the agent and the security review around it.
- The middle position, keeping your own agents and adding org controls, is where Continuum sits.
Two different purchases
T3 Code describes itself as an agent harness control surface. It drives Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, Grok Build, and OpenCode, gives each thread a git worktree, shows an inline diff, opens a pull request in one click, and runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web. It is MIT-licensed and free. It resells nothing, so it never sees your prompts, never rate limits you, and never learns what a run cost.
Factory sells Droid, a first-party software-development agent, and then sells the organization around it. Its enterprise material covers SSO and SCIM, model and tool policy, LLM gateways, OpenTelemetry signals, auditability, network controls, and deployment inside customer infrastructure including hybrid and fully airgapped patterns. Its published individual plans are Pro at $20 a month, Plus at $100, and Max at $200, with organization plans priced separately. There is no free plan.
| Layer | T3 Code | Factory |
|---|---|---|
| The agent | Yours. Five provider CLIs | Theirs. Droid |
| The model | Whatever your plan gives you | Routed by Factory policy |
| The window | Its entire product | One of several surfaces |
| Isolation | Worktree and branch per thread | Platform and deployment controls |
| Central policy | None | Models, tools, MCP, autonomy levels |
| Identity | None | SSO and SCIM |
| Telemetry and audit | None | OpenTelemetry oriented |
| Deployment options | Your machine | Cloud, hybrid, fully airgapped |
| Price | $0, MIT | From $20/mo, no free plan |
| Someone to call | A GitHub issue | An enterprise relationship |
Which question are you actually asking
In practice people arrive at this comparison from one of three directions, and each has a clean answer.
"I saw Factory demoed and I want that for free"
You will be disappointed, and not because T3 Code is worse. What impressed you in the demo was probably Droid running a long task under a specification and returning a reviewable branch. The agent doing that work is Factory's. T3 Code has no agent. What it can do is run Claude Code or Codex on the same task, in a worktree, with a diff and a PR button, which for many task classes gets you a comparable result at the cost of the subscription you already hold. That is a genuinely good outcome, just not the same product.
"We use T3 Code and now security wants controls"
This is the common one, and it is where the two products actually touch. T3 Code has no answer here at all: no seats, no policy, no audit trail, no admin console, no support contract. That is a deliberate positioning choice by a project that sells nothing. Factory is one real answer. So is Conductor Enterprise, which publishes SAML SSO and SCIM. So is Continuum's organization tier. Which one fits depends on whether you also want to change agents.
"We are on Factory and it is more than we need"
Then the question is which part you would keep. If it is the agent, look at Claude Code or Codex directly. If it is the governance, do not drop to a free board and hope, because you will rebuild the same controls badly in spreadsheets. The Factory AI alternatives guide separates those cases properly, and the switching guide covers the specific route where you keep governance and change agent strategy.
| You need | Answer |
|---|---|
| A free window over agents you already pay for | T3 Code |
| One vendor accountable for agent, policy, and deployment | Factory |
| Hybrid or airgapped execution as a requirement | Factory |
| Linux or Android clients | T3 Code |
| To fork the tool and own the code | T3 Code |
| Model policy and caps while keeping Claude Code and Codex | Continuum |
| A spend number per person and per repository | Continuum |
The middle position, and its honest limits
There is a real gap between these two products, and it is where most teams that outgrow a free board actually land. They do not want to replace Claude Code and Codex with a proprietary agent, and they do not need airgapped deployment. They want to keep the agents that are already working and put controls around them.
Continuum occupies that position. It runs Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok, and OpenCode under your own logins in isolated worktrees, so the agents do not change, and it is free at the individual level on your own keys. On top of that it adds what a free board structurally cannot: live five-hour and weekly quota gauges per provider, spend attributed by repository, and multiple accounts of the same provider kept config-isolated. The organization tier starts from $25 per member per month and adds model allowlists that resolve organization then team then member with new models blocked until an admin reviews them, weekly caps per person and per team with one-click approvals, a ledger of who ran what under whose policy, and OpenAI-compatible and Anthropic-compatible endpoints so existing tooling keeps working. Admin keys for your own Anthropic and OpenAI contracts can be brought in, so the vendor relationship stays yours.
Where Factory stays ahead, stated plainly. Factory sells deployment patterns Continuum does not self-serve, including fully airgapped operation, and it publishes SSO and SCIM. Continuum does not federate an external identity provider today: sign-in runs on WorkOS AuthKit with Google and Apple login, and running in your own environment is scoped as an Enterprise engagement rather than a download. Org-wide network allow and block lists are likewise part of an Enterprise engagement rather than a self-serve setting. If your requirement list is the full enterprise checklist and you want it as shipped product, Factory is the more complete answer and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
Questions people ask
Is T3 Code a free Factory AI alternative?
Not really. Factory sells its own agent plus governance, deployment, and telemetry. T3 Code sells nothing and owns no agent; it is a window over CLIs you bring. If the appeal of Factory was Droid doing long autonomous work, running Claude Code or Codex inside T3 Code is the closest free approximation, and it is an approximation of the agent only.
Does Factory AI have a free tier?
No public free plan. Its individual ladder starts at Pro at $20 a month, with Plus at $100 and Max at $200, and organization plans priced separately. Droid Core is a free open-weight model pool that applies after standard usage is exhausted rather than a standalone free plan.
Which has better enterprise controls?
Factory, without qualification. It documents SSO and SCIM, model and tool policy, LLM gateways, OpenTelemetry signals, network controls, and deployment inside customer infrastructure including hybrid and airgapped patterns. T3 Code has none of that and does not claim to.
Can I get org controls without giving up Claude Code and Codex?
Yes, and that is the gap between these two products. Continuum keeps the provider CLIs your team already uses and adds model policy by team and person, weekly caps with approvals, and a spend ledger. It does not match Factory on airgapped deployment or identity federation.
Is Factory AI overkill for a small team?
Often, yes. If nobody is asking about deployment patterns, telemetry destinations, or centrally governed autonomy, you are paying for a platform layer you will not configure. A board plus your existing subscriptions is usually the right size until the governance question is real.
Can T3 Code drive Factory Droid?
No. T3 Code supports Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, Grok Build, and OpenCode. Droid is Factory's own agent and is used through Factory's surfaces.
How should we test the two against each other?
Only test them together if you have not decided whether you are buying an agent or a window. Use one spec-heavy feature with written acceptance criteria and one edit-heavy fix, run each in both products, and measure accepted work plus reviewer time. If the spec-heavy task is where the value is, you are shopping for a platform, not a board.
Sources
Every figure above was read from these pages on August 2026. Vendors reprice without notice; if you find a stale number, tell us.