Price terms as published
Each line is the vendor’s own wording, split from the price capture checked on 2026-09-30. Nothing here is rounded, converted or re-worded — the full sentences stay in the review below. Lines that carry only a price continue the plan named on the line above, in the vendor’s own order.
| # | Plan / term | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Free (MIT, self-hosted | 2026-09-30 |
| 2 | model usage billed by your own providers — BYO keys) | 2026-09-30 |
One-liner: Octop is an open-source (MIT), self-hosted AI assistant platform from
Tencent’s cloud GitHub org: a single octop run process serves a web dashboard, a CLI,
IM channels (Feishu, DingTalk, QQ, WeChat, Telegram, Discord, WeCom), cron automation,
knowledge-base RAG and browser automation — multi-user, multi-agent, all state under
~/.octop/.
Verified facts (checked 2026-09-30)
| Attribute | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | 5,876 | TencentCloud/Octop via GitHub API, 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | 730 | GitHub API |
| Open issues / PRs | 337 / 269 | GitHub API (search, same day) |
| License | MIT | GitHub API license field + README badge |
| Created | 2026-07-08 | GitHub API |
| Last push | 2026-09-29 | GitHub API |
| Language / runtime | Python 3.12+ | README badges |
| Version | 1.0.2b5 (beta tag) | README badge; PyPI package octop |
| Control-plane DB | SQLite (WAL) default, PostgreSQL optional | README |
| Install | one-line script (macOS/Linux), PowerShell/cmd (Windows), pip install octop, Docker; native desktop apps for Win/macOS/Linux; FnOS NAS packages |
README |
| Model config | OpenAI-compatible APIs, DashScope (Qwen), Ollama and other presets, per agent | README |
| Price | Free; no hosted paid tier listed on repo or octop.cloud | README + octop.cloud (2026-09-30) |
What it is
The README’s framing is a “digital life form that can operate in parallel” — strip the
marketing and the architecture is concrete: every surface (web UI, IM, cron) routes
through one in-process HarnessProcessor, no external queue, and the whole state is
rebuilt from the control-plane database on boot. For a family: one admin account,
different agents and “experts” per member. For a small team: shared experts and
knowledge bases.
Feature pillars from the repo:
- Multi-agent + experts — multiple experts per user, each with its own workspace, providers, channels and cron jobs.
- IM-native — chat over Feishu, DingTalk, QQ, WeChat, Telegram, Discord, WeCom, or programmatic HTTP/SSE/WebSocket.
- Portable memory — hierarchical recall with full-text search via the companion
octop-memoryrepo; memory travels with the workspace. - Knowledge base — RAG over your documents, shareable within a deployment.
- Browser AI+ / Terminal AI+ — CDP-based headless Chromium automation with
persistent profiles (
octop-browser), plus an in-browser shell assistant. - Remote desktop — live screen and input from the dashboard on Linux, Windows and macOS; one-click isolated desktop on headless Linux.
- Pluggable workspace backends — local disk, Docker sandbox, PostgreSQL, COS/S3.
- Connectors + plugins — OAuth and MCP gateway connectors (incl. a Tencent suite:
Docs, Meeting, News),
octop pluginfor third-party extensions.
The caveats
- Two months old, beta-numbered. 1.0.2b5 with 606 open issues+PRs since early July is a project still finding its edges; read the changelog before each upgrade.
- Self-hosting is real work. JWT secrets, admin bootstrap (Docker writes a random
password to
/data/.octop/credential.txtunless you set one), service registration — this is for people who like running things. - Model costs are yours. Octop is free; tokens are billed by whichever provider you wire in (OpenAI-compatible, DashScope, Ollama for local).
- Security posture needs thought. An assistant with terminal, browser automation and remote desktop on your network is a large blast radius; third-party reviewers testing it for authorized pentesting stress exactly this point. Isolate it.
- The default installer is a curl-pipe-bash from a Tencent COS bucket. Standard for this genre, but inspect the script first if that matters to you.
FAQ
Is Octop free? Yes — MIT, self-hosted, no paid tier advertised. You pay only your own model providers.
Does it need a GPU? No. It orchestrates API models; local models via Ollama are the GPU path, optional.
Windows support? PowerShell/cmd installers plus a native NSIS desktop app, alongside macOS (.dmg) and Linux (tar.gz) builds.
Sources
- https://github.com/TencentCloud/Octop — README full text (fetched 2026-09-30)
- https://api.github.com/repos/TencentCloud/Octop — stars, forks, license, dates (2026-09-30)
- GitHub search API — open issues (337) / PRs (269) counts (2026-09-30)
- https://octop.cloud — official site (extracted 2026-09-30)
- Wavect — “Tencent Octop Review: What Builders Actually Get for Free” (third-party review, MIT license and feature inventory cross-check)
- Medium / Pentester Club — “I Tested Tencent’s OctoP AI Agent for Cybersecurity” (third-party hands-on, security-scope cross-check)