# brainplane and Claude Squad compared

Claude Squad is a free, open source terminal app that runs several Claude Code, Codex, Gemini or Aider sessions in tmux, each in its own git workspace. brainplane is a paid Mac app that shares context between agents, checks handoffs and gathers their questions in 1 Inbox. If you only need parallel sessions in a terminal, Claude Squad is enough.

Canonical: https://brainplane.app/compare/claude-squad/

## The short version

| | Claude Squad | brainplane |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A terminal app that manages several AI terminal agents | A Mac app with a small local service |
| Where it runs | Your terminal, on tmux (needs tmux and gh) | macOS 26 or later on Apple silicon |
| Agents | Claude Code by default; Codex, Gemini, Aider and other local agents | Claude Code, Codex, Grok and 11 more agent tools |
| Isolation | Each task gets its own git workspace | Works with the setup you have; records which session touched which file |
| Questions | You switch to each session | 1 Inbox, 1 card per topic, standing answers for repeat questions |
| Context between agents | Each session on its own | 1 shared brain per topic, context packs of 3,000 tokens at most |
| Auto-accept | An experimental auto-accept mode | Sending, paying, deleting and deploying always wait for you |
| License and price | AGPL-3.0, free | Proprietary, 14 days free; then $12 a month or $99 a year once checkout opens |

Claude Squad facts come from its GitHub README, read on 9 October 2026 (8,586 stars, last push 20 August 2026).

## When Claude Squad is enough

- You live in the terminal and want several sessions side by side.
- You want each task in its own git worktree, after you install Claude Squad, tmux and gh.
- You want free and open source.

## When brainplane adds something

- You brief several agents on the same work and want them to share it.
- You want a handoff with acceptance checks, or a review by another model family.
- Questions repeat, and you want your saved decisions to answer them with a receipt.
- You want 1 Inbox on the Mac and on your phone for every agent that waits.

## Use them together

Start your sessions with Claude Squad. Connect the same agents to brainplane: setup adds 1 MCP server entry to each agent, and brainplane works with tmux sessions. The agents then read the shared brain and send their questions to the Inbox.

## Questions

### Is Claude Squad free?

Yes. It is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license.

### Does brainplane need tmux?

No. brainplane works with sessions in iTerm2, Terminal, tmux and herdr, and with agents it starts itself.

### Is brainplane open source?

No. The code is proprietary. Every change to your agent settings is shown first and keeps a backup.

Sources: [github.com/smtg-ai/claude-squad](https://github.com/smtg-ai/claude-squad), read on 9 October 2026. brainplane facts: [docs](/docs/) and [FAQ](/faq/). brainplane has no link with Claude Squad or its makers.