Grain vs Ona

Quick answer

Ona and Grain both sit around coding agents, but they preserve different parts of the work. Ona supplies AWS cloud environments, usage units, project sharing and role-based access so agents and developers can work. Grain accepts output from the agent you use and publishes it as a page, app, report or job. Ona is hybrid rather than strictly locked to one agent, while Grain includes no generation agent at all. The acquisition matters to vendor strategy, not to an invented feature change: Ona says it joined OpenAI, but does not detail post-close product or price changes.

Fit first

What is different, verifiably

Where Ona is better

• Your primary need is a managed cloud development environment where agents execute coding work, not a publishing destination for the result.
• You want an included agent option while retaining the ability to connect Claude Code or a Codex subscription. Grain never supplies the agent.
• A large group needs project sharing and role-based access around development; Core lists up to one hundred team members without an extra member charge.
• Enterprise deployment must run in your AWS or GCP VPC. Grain's enterprise controls are described as running in the customer's cloud, but the public identity does not name specific providers.

Where Grain is better

• You need a free continuing tier for publication rather than a paid cloud environment metered in usage units.
• The main user is the reader of an app, report, dashboard or walkthrough, not the developer or agent operating the environment.
• You do not need Ona's 80-to-2,200-OCU managed development environment or Enterprise VPC deployment; the artifact itself is the durable unit.
• Your collaborators should open a public, password or invite-only artifact and comment there rather than join an Ona project team of up to 100 members.
• You want artifact files available through a pull command and a self-hostable core, while keeping agent choice entirely outside the platform.

Moving between them

1. From Ona to Grain: obtain the project files from the development environment using the repository or file workflow available to your team. The Ona pricing page does not document a special export mechanism, so do not assume environment state becomes a portable bundle.
2. Run grain init in the local project. This creates a Grain workspace and writes agent configuration for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor unless you disable that step.
3. Ask the agent to separate development-environment dependencies from application dependencies. Move durable app data into Postgres and define login or scheduled jobs only when the published result needs them.
4. Run grain push, grain checkpoint -m "publish from Ona", then grain share --public or a protected share. Verify the returned URL as a reader rather than from inside the development environment.
5. From Grain to Ona: run grain pull, put the files in the repository used by the Ona project and configure the chosen agent. Grain database contents, identities, schedules, comments, share permissions and domain settings stay behind unless separately migrated.

Choice rule

Choose Ona

if the main problem is supplying managed cloud development environments, included agent capacity and team access around coding work.

Choose Grain

if the coding agent is already settled and the missing layer is durable publication, application services and reader access.

Use both

if an agent develops in Ona and publishes finished review artifacts or operational apps into Grain.

Frequently asked questions