Maude vs Happier

Happier is the closest thing to Maude. It runs coding agents on your own computers and you drive them from your phone, with end-to-end encryption, an inbox, push approvals, and agent switching inside a session. It's also free and MIT-licensed, and it covers more agents than we do. If you got here looking for a Happier alternative, the honest answer is that Happier is very good. Most of the differences below come down to how the agent gets onto your server and who keeps it running, not to features one side is missing.

At a glance

We took Happier's details from happier.dev, its documentation and its GitHub repository on 2026-10-01. Happier ships often, so check there for anything recent.

Setup

This is the biggest practical difference.

Happier runs a CLI and a background daemon on each computer that does the work. Its getting-started guide has you install it with curl -fsSL https://happier.dev/install | bash, run happier setup to link the machine to your account and pick a relay, and accept the offer to start it automatically. For a remote box, the docs describe Add machine over SSH from the Machines settings screen and happier machine setup --ssh user@host from the CLI. The agents themselves are yours to install: the docs say "Happier detects what is already there and does not bundle an agent", though it can help with managed installs for some. Updates come through happier self update.

Maude starts from the phone and needs nothing on the server except SSH. You add a Linux or macOS machine (x86-64 or ARM) by its address, a pasted ssh … command, or a QR printed by curl -fsSL https://maude.pilotdev.fr/setup | sh. The app then deploys its own daemon over SSH and installs each agent at a tested, pinned version, verified against a checksum. It updates the daemon and the agents itself, and an optional button creates a non-root user. You sign in to each agent from the phone. Our VPS setup guide walks through choosing and preparing a box.

The trade-off: Happier lets you use whatever agent versions you already have, the day they ship. Maude moves to a new agent version only after it has been tested with the app. That way a CLI change can't quietly break your sessions, but you can sit a release or two behind.

Agents

Happier supports more. Its homepage lists 13 built-in agents: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot, Qwen, Kimi, Auggie, Kilo, Kiro, Pi and Grok. Its GitHub page also names Antigravity, Devin and others, and any ACP-compatible CLI can be added. If you use Cursor, Copilot or Qwen from your phone, that settles it.

Maude runs five: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Grok Build and Antigravity. Each one has its own driver with engine, model, effort and permission-mode controls for whatever that agent supports. One example: headless Antigravity can't stop and ask before a tool runs, so Maude shows the denied action and lets you approve it afterwards. Maude adds the allow rule and retries.

Security model

Both apps keep the agent and your code on your machine, and both put an encrypting relay between the phone and the machine. Happier's content is "encrypted on your device and the server stores ciphertext it cannot read". It has an optional plaintext mode. You can also host the relay yourself with happier relay host install, so the traffic never leaves your network. That's a real advantage for teams with strict network rules.

In Maude, the server dials out to Maude's relay, so you don't need an open inbound port. Traffic is end-to-end encrypted with a per-server key, and the relay only sees ciphertext. SSH is the fallback, and Maude uses it for deploys and recovery. You can't self-host Maude's relay.

Features

Most of the feature lists overlap. Both have a unified inbox, push notifications for permission requests, switching a session to another agent with context carried over, git worktrees, a file browser, diff review, commits and pull requests, and a real terminal. Happier adds a voice assistant, line comments on diffs, desktop and web apps, and moving a session between computers.

Maude's push notifications carry Allow and Deny buttons, and you can turn categories on and off. When you switch agents, the new one gets a brief with the plan, the files touched, the git state, the recent conversation and the last instruction. Switching back resumes the original agent's own session. More on that in handing tasks between coding agents. Maude also has a tablet layout with a sidebar on iPad.

Price and licence

Happier: "The CLI, the mobile apps, the desktop app, the web app and the relay are free and MIT-licensed", with no seat count and no feature gate. You can read the code, fork it and run all of it yourself.

Maude costs $2.99/week after a 3-day free trial or $59.99/year after a 7-day free trial (USD; the store sets the local price). It isn't open source, and there's no free tier. With either app, each agent still needs its own subscription or API key. See Maude pricing.

Who should pick which

Pick Happier if you want something free or open source, or you use agents Maude doesn't run (Cursor, Copilot, Qwen, Kimi and others). It's also the pick if you want desktop or web clients next to the phone, voice control, or a relay on your own infrastructure. You're comfortable installing a CLI and the agents on each machine.

Pick Maude if you'd rather hand the app an SSH login and never install anything on the server yourself. It installs tested, pinned agent versions and keeps itself and the agents up to date, and the five agents it runs cover what you use. It's built for a server that runs coding agents 24/7, so you can check in from the phone.

Both are easy to try: Happier costs nothing, and Maude has a free trial. For the wider field, including the official vendor apps, see our roundup of coding agent phone apps.

Frequently asked questions

What changed

• October 1, 2026 — First published. Happier details checked against happier.dev, docs.happier.dev and its GitHub repository.