Pinchy vs Dust
Dust is a polished, multiplayer AI-assistant platform — its MIT core is public, but the product is a managed cloud with broad SaaS connectors and enterprise compliance. Pinchy is self-hosted first: AGPL, per-agent tool permissions, and an HMAC-signed audit trail in the free tier, fully offline with local models. Both are open source. They optimize for different things.
The Core Difference
Connect your SaaS tools, build assistants your whole team shares, and let Dust run it for you. The center of gravity is a polished, collaborative assistant product, hosted and operated by Dust.
Pinchy runs on your own infrastructure — one Docker Compose stack, your models, your data. The center of gravity is governance: which tools each agent may use, and a signed record of everything it does.
Dust's core is MIT and Pinchy is AGPL-3.0, so neither locks you in at the code level. The difference is the product bet: Dust optimizes for a managed cloud experience, Pinchy for running entirely on your own terms.
Side by Side
Figures as of June 2026. Check each project's pricing and docs for current details.
| Dust | Pinchy | |
|---|---|---|
| Product model | Managed multiplayer cloud (MIT core) | Self-hosted first (AGPL) |
| License (core) | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Free tier | No (paid Pro tier) | Yes (AGPL, free) |
| Pricing model | Per user / month | Flat (free + flat Pro) |
| Where data is processed | Dust cloud (EU residency on Enterprise) | Your infrastructure |
| Self-hosting | Possible (MIT code), not the happy path | First-class (Docker Compose, GHCR) |
| Local models / offline | Cloud LLMs | Ollama, fully offline |
| Knowledge connectors | Many SaaS (Notion, Slack, Drive, GitHub…) | Odoo, Gmail, Telegram, web, docs |
| Per-agent tool permissions | Workspace / space permissions | Allow-list per agent |
| Audit of agent actions | Enterprise audit-log retention | HMAC-signed per row, free, CSV export |
| Enterprise compliance | SOC 2 Type II, SSO/SCIM, data residency | No certification yet |
| Scale / funding | $40M Series B (2026) | Early-stage, built in public |
Being Honest
Dust connects to a wide range of SaaS sources — Notion, Slack, Google Drive, GitHub and more — so assistants can draw on company knowledge across tools. Pinchy's integration list (Odoo, Gmail, Telegram, web, docs) is deliberately narrower.
Dust documents SOC 2 Type II, SSO/SAML and SCIM provisioning, and EU data residency on its Enterprise tier. Pinchy has strong self-hosted governance but no compliance certification yet.
If you would rather not run infrastructure, Dust hosts and operates everything, with a multiplayer collaboration experience. Pinchy asks you to run a Docker stack — power and control in exchange for some ops.
A $40M Series B in 2026 and a large customer base put Dust further along the maturity and trust curve than early-stage Pinchy. For some buyers, that track record is the deciding factor.
Where Pinchy Wins
Pinchy is built to run entirely on your infrastructure. Paired with a local model via Ollama, no prompt or document ever leaves your network — air-gapped if you need it. There is no telemetry and no phone-home.
Per-agent tool allow-lists, roles, and an HMAC-signed audit trail are in Pinchy's free AGPL tier. With Dust, compliance and identity features sit behind the paid Enterprise tier.
Pinchy is free under AGPL with a flat Pro tier for team governance. Dust prices per user per month, which scales with headcount. For larger teams the cost curves diverge quickly.
Each agent starts with zero tools; admins enable each one explicitly, per agent. Every tool call is recorded in an individually HMAC-signed audit row you can export and verify.
Pinchy ships a deep Odoo integration: query stock, create orders, reconcile invoices, all from chat or Telegram. Acting inside an ERP is a first-class use case, not a generic connector.
Before an agent sends an email or writes to a business system, it can draft and ask for confirmation. The human stays in the loop by design, not as a bolt-on.
Decision Guide
You want a managed, multiplayer assistant cloud with broad SaaS knowledge connectors and out-of-the-box compliance (SOC 2, SSO, SCIM), and per-seat pricing is acceptable.
Data must stay on your own infrastructure or fully offline, you want per-agent governance and a signed audit without paying per seat, and Odoo is central to the work.
Where must the data live, and how do you want to pay? If the answer is "our servers" and "not per seat", that points to Pinchy. If it is "managed, with broad connectors" and seat pricing is fine, that points to Dust.
FAQ
For teams that want self-hosted, governance-first agents on their own infrastructure, yes. Both are open-source AI agent platforms — Dust's core is MIT, Pinchy is AGPL-3.0 — but they optimize for different things. Dust is a polished, multiplayer assistant cloud with broad SaaS connectors. Pinchy runs on your own servers, with per-agent tool permissions and a signed audit trail in its free tier.
Dust's core codebase is open source under the MIT license and public on GitHub. In practice, the Dust product is a managed multiplayer cloud — that is where the connectors, polish, and support live, and self-hosting is not the documented happy path. Pinchy is self-hosted first: a single Docker Compose stack with pre-built images is the primary way to run it.
Dust is priced per user per month, with a paid Pro tier and no free tier (Pro around EUR 29/user/month as of June 2026; check Dust's pricing for current figures). Pinchy is free under AGPL-3.0 and adds a flat Pro tier for team governance — not per seat. Roles and the HMAC-signed audit trail are in the free tier.
With Dust's managed cloud, your prompts and connected data are processed by Dust; EU data residency is available on its Enterprise tier. With Pinchy, data stays on your own infrastructure, and paired with a local model via Ollama no request ever leaves your network. The license key is validated offline, so Pinchy never phones home.
Choose Dust when you want a managed, multiplayer assistant cloud with broad SaaS knowledge connectors (Notion, Slack, Drive, GitHub and more) and out-of-the-box enterprise compliance such as SOC 2 Type II, SSO and SCIM, and per-seat pricing is acceptable. Choose Pinchy when data must stay on your infrastructure or offline, when you want per-agent governance and a signed audit without paying per seat, and especially when Odoo is central to the work.
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