The Kodus alternative for regulated teams

Most comparisons on this site turn on a single question: can you self-host it without an enterprise contract? Against Kodus that question does not separate us. They are self-hosted-first too, they are genuinely open source, and their community tier is free. If you are choosing between us, the honest differences are narrower and more specific than our other comparisons, so this page is written accordingly.

TL;DR, who should pick which

Side-by-side comparison

	Kodus	Gatekeep
Self-hosting without an enterprise contract	Yes	Yes
Bring your own LLM / local model	Yes, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint	Yes, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
License	AGPLv3 core; Enterprise features under a separate commercial license	Apache-2.0 open-core committed; repository still private
Available to install today	Yes, free community tier	Early access, design-partner program
Packaged air-gap installer	No, documented as do-it-yourself	Yes, image-tarball install path
Default outbound telemetry	Anonymous daily heartbeat, opt-out via env var	None
Audit log tier	Enterprise, commercial license	Core
Blocking merge gate with forced justification	Not documented	Yes
SSO / RBAC	Enterprise tier	Roadmap
Source hosts	GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket	GitHub only others roadmap

The three differences that actually matter

1. Air-gap is packaged for us and explicitly do-it-yourself for them

This is their own published wording, not our characterisation: there is no packaged air-gap installer, and offline operation is "functionally yes, with caveats." The documented path asks you to mirror container images into a private registry, pin a version, point at an internal model server, use a local git host, and disable telemetry. All of that is achievable, and if you run a mature disconnected environment you may already do it for everything else. Gatekeep ships a documented image-tarball install instead. See our write-up on air-gapped deployment for what that involves either way.

2. Audit logging is core for us, Enterprise for them

Kodus lists audit logs alongside SSO, RBAC and analytics as Enterprise features under a separate commercial license. For most teams that is a reasonable split. For a compliance buyer it is a procurement question: the evidence you will hand an auditor sits behind a second agreement. Gatekeep's append-only hash-chained log, its override justifications, and its export endpoint are core, because the evidence layer is the product rather than a tier of it.

3. Telemetry, stated fairly

Kodus sends an anonymous daily heartbeat by default: aggregated counters like PRs reviewed, integrations enabled and uptime. It explicitly excludes your source code, PR titles, identifiers and LLM traffic, and one environment variable turns it off. That is a responsible implementation and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

The difference is narrower than vendors usually claim in comparisons like this. Gatekeep sends nothing because there is no code path that sends anything, so there is nothing to disable. Theirs is on by default and you turn it off. In a security review those produce different findings: one is verified by reading an architecture, the other by trusting that a flag does what it says. Whether that distinction matters is genuinely your call, and for many teams it will not.

When Kodus is the better fit

More often than you might expect from a page on our own site.

• You want to try it today. This is the big one. Kodus is installable right now, free, with public source. Gatekeep is in early access and the repository is private. If your evaluation starts with "let me just run it," we currently lose that comparison and we would rather say so than waste your afternoon.
• You need SSO or RBAC now. They ship it in Enterprise. We have not built it.
• You use GitLab or Bitbucket. They support all three major hosts. We are GitHub-only as of July 2026.
• You want AGPL specifically. If copyleft is a requirement rather than a preference, Apache-2.0 is the wrong license for you.

What Gatekeep is

Self-hosted AI code review built around a blocking compliance merge gate. Reviews run inside your network against a model you choose, policy failures stop the merge rather than commenting on it, and every gate decision and override lands in an append-only hash-chained audit log with a written justification attached. It is aimed at teams whose difficulty is not "can we run AI review" but "can we prove to an auditor how it behaved."

FAQ

Is Kodus open source?

Yes. As of July 2026 the Kodus core is AGPLv3 and free to self-host. Enterprise features including SSO, RBAC, audit logs and analytics sit under a separate commercial license activated with a license key. Gatekeep has committed to Apache-2.0 open-core, but the repository is private today, so if having source you can read right now is decisive, Kodus wins that comparison.

Can Kodus run air-gapped?

Their documentation says offline operation is functionally possible with caveats, and states plainly that there is no packaged air-gap installer. The steps are do-it-yourself: mirror container images into a private registry, pin the version, point at an internal OpenAI-compatible model server, use a local git host, and disable telemetry. Gatekeep ships a documented image-tarball install for disconnected networks.

Does Kodus send telemetry?

By default it sends an anonymous daily heartbeat with aggregated counters such as PRs reviewed, integrations enabled and uptime. It explicitly excludes source code, PR titles, identifiers and LLM traffic, and it can be disabled with a single environment variable. Gatekeep sends nothing at all, which is an architectural property rather than a setting. Both are defensible; they differ in what a security reviewer has to verify.

Which one has better audit logging?

It depends on your tier. Kodus lists audit logs as an Enterprise feature under a separate commercial license. Gatekeep's append-only, hash-chained audit log and forced override justification are core, not an upsell. For a compliance buyer the question is whether your evidence layer requires a second commercial agreement.

When should I pick Kodus over Gatekeep?

If you want to install something today without talking to anyone, read the full source before deploying, pay nothing, or you need SSO and RBAC now. Kodus has a free AGPLv3 community tier available immediately and Gatekeep does not. If your blocker is packaged air-gap support, core audit evidence, or a blocking merge gate with recorded justifications, that is where Gatekeep is built differently.

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