Cua vs Skyvern
A side-by-side comparison of Cua and Skyvern, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Cua | Skyvern |
|---|---|---|
| Category (differs) | Agent | Automation |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License | Open core | Open core |
| Deployment | Hybrid | Hybrid |
| Platforms (differs) | macOS, Linux, CLI, API | Web, API, CLI |
| Model support (differs) | Model-agnostic | BYO key / model |
| Vendor (differs) | Cua | Skyvern |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
Cua
Boots Linux/Windows/macOS/Android VMs from one API for computer-use agents, hitting near-native speed on Apple Silicon via Apple's Virtualization.framework.
- Isolated VMs across four OS families
- Agents control full desktops, not just browsers
- SDKs and benchmarks included
- Run locally with any LLM
- Cloud, BYOC, or on-prem hosting
- Cloud hosting is paid/commercial
- Developer/infra tool, not an end-user app
- Computer-use agents are still error-prone
Skyvern
Drives sites with vision + LLMs instead of brittle selectors, so flows survive redesigns — and you can self-host the AGPL engine.
- Vision+LLM, no hand-written selectors
- Generalizes to unseen sites
- Self-hostable open-source core
- BYO model (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama)
- AGPL-3.0 limits commercial reuse
- Vision approach can be slower/costlier
- Newer, smaller ecosystem
When to pick which
Both cover Browser automation.
Pick Cua if you need Sandboxed code execution, Agent framework, and LLM evaluation.
- Sandboxed code execution (secondary capability)
- Agent framework (primary capability)
- LLM evaluation (primary capability)
Pick Skyvern if you need Web scraping and Trigger-action automation.
- Web scraping (secondary capability)
- Trigger-action automation (secondary capability)
Skyvern leans on Browser automation as a headline capability; Cua treats it as secondary.
- Browser automation (primary capability)
They also differ on:
- Platforms
- macOS, Linux, CLI, API · Web, API, CLI