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Novo Agents vs Claude Managed Agents

Both run a hosted agent loop so you don't build one. They differ on what ships in the loop, whose models it can use, what procurement can sign, and whether you can re-bill a run. Facts below were verified against Anthropic's published documentation in July 2026.

Claude Managed Agents is Anthropic's hosted agent runtime (public beta): server-side sessions with a managed sandbox, built-in tools, memory stores, and skills. It is a serious product, and if your product is committed to Claude it deserves a close look. Novo Agents is the complete agent behind one API for teams that want the whole capability surface managed and the model plane kept neutral.

What ships in the loop

Claude Managed Agents ships eight built-in tools: bash, file operations (read, write, edit, glob, grep), web search, and web fetch. Browser automation, document production (Office, PDF), and media generation are yours to supply through custom tools, scripts, or MCP servers you host.

Novo Agents includes the managed capability suite in the same loop: a hosted browser with 25 tools, Office and PDF production with export, media generation and editing (image, video, speech, music, sound effects), web research with untrusted-content fencing, GitHub with a credential proxy, and human-in-the-loop approvals. One capability config turns each on.

Model plane

Claude Managed Agents runs Claude models only. Agent versioning and session-level model overrides make migrations inside the Claude family orderly, and new Claude models land there quickly.

Novo Agents sells bands instead of models: a stable capability and cost envelope that Novo keeps at the frontier as models change, from any lab. When a stronger model ships anywhere, your band improves and your integration does not move. Model churn elsewhere is the exhibit: one major lab's own deprecations page shows six-month floors on production models and an agent-builder product deprecation-noticed about eight months after launch.

Containment and data handling

Claude Managed Agents has a genuinely good execution split: self-hosted sandboxes (public beta) move tool execution into your infrastructure, and a scoped environment key keeps their API key off your workers. Two limits matter for procurement. Tool inputs and outputs still flow through their control plane, and their own documentation states Managed Agents is not currently eligible for Zero Data Retention or HIPAA BAA coverage, because sessions are stateful by design.

Novo Agents runs tools in your infrastructure through signed adapters while provider keys never enter your environment, and strict data handling is a per-run flag: verified zero-data-retention, no-training routes on an explicit provider allowlist, discoverable per band via GET /v1/bands.

Metering and re-billing

Claude Managed Agents bills model tokens at API rates plus $0.08 per session-hour while running. The admin usage API groups by API key and workspace; as of July 2026 Anthropic does not publish a per-session or per-end-customer cost surface, so attributing a run's cost to your customer means deriving it from session events yourself.

Novo Agents makes the receipt the contract: per-run cost in fractional cents, hard budgetCents caps with typed terminal reasons, and usage grouped by API key, thread, band, and day, clean enough to pass through to your own customers with your own margin.

Streams, durability, and waiting on humans

Credit where due: a Claude Managed Agents session waits indefinitely for a tool approval at no runtime cost, and idle sandboxes checkpoint for 30 days. Reconnecting a dropped stream means opening a new stream and de-duplicating against the full event history, since there is no resume cursor. Novo streams are AI SDK UI-message chunks with a monotonic event id: reconnect with Last-Event-Id and the stream picks up exactly where it left off, through crashes and deploys. Interactions park for two weeks by default and longer when a run allows it.

What Claude Managed Agents does better

Model economics at the source. As the model owner, Anthropic prices the harness near zero and lands its newest models there first.
Organization-level certifications. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001/42001 at the company level, with enterprise procurement paths through AWS Marketplace and Azure.
Brand permission. "Powered by Claude" is a sanctioned partner asset; some end customers ask for it by name.
Sandbox ecosystem. Ten-plus platform integration guides for self-hosted execution appeared within months of the beta.

The short version. If your product is all-in on Claude and your team is happy building browser, documents, media, and per-customer billing around the loop, Claude Managed Agents is a strong base. If you want the whole capability surface included, a model plane that stays at the frontier without a migration, verified strict data handling per run, and receipts you can re-bill, that is what Novo Agents is for.

Competitor facts verified 2026-07-15 against Anthropic's published documentation and pricing. Something out of date? Tell us: sales@novoagents.ai.