Big labs went halfway local in October: six CLI agents compared on telemetry, cost and licenses
GapNew4766 · reddit · 2026-11-03
A Reddit user compiled an October roundup comparing six CLI coding agents — Codex CLI (OpenAI), Gemini CLI (Google), Copilot CLI (GitHub), Hermes Agent (Nous), Atomic Agent and OpenClaw — on local model support, cloud account requirements, licenses, pricing and default telemetry.
Key takeaways:
- The big labs "went local" only halfway: Copilot CLI auto-discovers Ollama models and Codex offers --oss, but Gemini CLI's agent always talks to Google, with only an optional experimental routing model running locally.
- "Local" doesn't mean quiet: Copilot CLI still sends telemetry even with your own key unless offline mode is on; Codex, Gemini CLI and Atomic Agent also send usage stats by default. Only Hermes is opt-in.
- The three open-source options (Hermes, Atomic, OpenClaw) all run without accounts, ship built-in llama.cpp, and are MIT-licensed.
- Surprise: Gemini CLI's terms list using OpenClaw with its login as a violation that can get your account suspended.
All data from official repos, docs and changelogs as of Oct 30.
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