Both take you from an AI conversation to a running app. The difference is where it runs and who holds the keys. AppDeploy is a hosted "chat to live URL" service on the vendor's cloud — smooth for indie and consumer projects. AppCrane is the self-hosted, enterprise-grade, agent-first alternative: the same flow, on infrastructure you own, with SSO, RBAC, audit, and a secret hard-wall.
AppDeploy is genuinely good at what it does: describe an app in chat, get a live URL, no server to manage. It's a hosted SaaS, which means the vendor runs the machines, holds your code, and stores your secrets on their multi-tenant cloud. For a side project or a demo, that convenience is the whole point.
AppCrane is for the moment that convenience becomes a liability — when the app touches customer data, internal systems, or model API keys you can't hand to a third party. It keeps the agent-first, one-command feel but lands every deploy on your Ubuntu server, inside your network, under your compliance controls.
| AppCrane | AppDeploy | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting model | Self-hosted, your box | Hosted vendor cloud |
| Data residency | Your VPC / on-prem | Vendor multi-tenant |
| Secret hard-wall (operator can't read keys) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Your model API keys stay on your box | ✓ | ✗ |
| Agent / MCP control | ✓ | ✓ |
| Enterprise SSO (SAML/OIDC/SCIM) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Four-role RBAC + per-user audit | ✓ | ~ |
| Sandbox + production envs | ✓ | ~ |
| Managed repo (no GitHub account) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | AGPL-3.0 | ✗ |
| Air-gap / on-prem friendly | ✓ | ✗ |
| No vendor lock-in | ✓ | ✗ |
Your infrastructure, your data. AppCrane runs on a server you provision — cloud VM, on-prem host, or an isolated network. Nothing round-trips through a vendor tenant.
Your keys never leave the building. The secret hard-wall is middleware-enforced: even the operator can't read app env vars, and the database returns ciphertext. When your agent sets an API key, it stays encrypted on your box.
Compliance-ready by default. SAML/OIDC/SCIM SSO, four roles (Platform Owner / App Owner / App Admin / App User), and per-user token-bound audit on every action — the controls a security review actually asks about.
AppDeploy is hosted on the vendor's cloud; AppCrane is self-hosted on yours. Same agent-first deploy flow, different trust boundary.
Yes — a one-command install on your Ubuntu server keeps code and secrets in your VPC or on-prem environment.
Yes. It exposes 35 appcrane_* MCP tools to Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex. See Deploy from Claude.
No — the secret hard-wall returns ciphertext even to direct database access.
Comparison reflects typical default capabilities as of mid-2026 and general characteristics of hosted "chat to live URL" services. Products evolve — verify specifics against each vendor's current docs. "~" marks features that exist but require a higher tier, add-ons, or aren't publicly documented.