Denly vs Codex cloud: the same agent, in a different place

Updated 2026-09-02

Both columns below are Codex: Denly drives the Codex CLI, so this compares two places to run one agent rather than two agents. What differs is where the repository is cloned, what OpenAI is granted, and whether the work runs while your machine is off.

Denly is a control plane for coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build, Antigravity) that run on your own machines and your own subscription: you describe a task, the agent plans it, you approve, it builds locally and opens a pull request. Codex is one of the five runtimes it drives, which is why this comparison is about the place rather than the agent.

Our trade-off, first.Work runs only while your machine is awake and online: a task queued at 02:00 starts when the runner wakes. Two parties outside Denly still see your code, because the work needs them – your Git host receives what the runner pushes, and your AI provider receives the context its own CLI sends.

Side by side

	Codex cloud tasks	Codex CLI, driven by Denly
The agent	OpenAI Codex	OpenAI Codex, plus Claude Code, Cursor, Grok Build and Antigravity
Where the repository is cloned	An isolated environment OpenAI operates	Your own machine, in the checkout that is already there
Repository access	Connect GitHub or GitLab and choose the repositories Codex may access	Install the Denly GitHub App on the repositories you pick, with two permissions: Contents and Pull requests. GitLab authorizes over OAuth
What that access is used for	Cloning your repository into OpenAI's environment	Minting a short-lived token the runner uses to pull and push from your machine. Denly's servers receive no file contents
Who pays for inference	Your ChatGPT plan	Your ChatGPT plan, through the CLI login on that machine
Runs while your machine is off	Yes	No. Queued work waits for the runner
Environment	Declared per project and rebuilt per task	The one your tests already pass in, including local databases and licensed tools
Gates before a merge	You review the diff and the pull request	Plan approval before any code is written, then review; workspace policy can require AI review, security review or human sign-off
Recurring work	Started per task	Daily, weekly or monthly schedules, with an optional timezone
Where tasks come from	The Codex surfaces	The dashboard, or any of 15 tracker and chat integrations

Product descriptions on this page were read from OpenAI's Codex cloud documentation on 2 September 2026. These products change; check their own pages before deciding.

When Codex cloud is the better choice

When the work should happen while your laptop is closed, when you want more parallel tasks than one machine can run, or when your project builds cleanly in a fresh container and nobody minds OpenAI holding a clone. A control plane in front of a local CLI fixes none of those.

When to run Codex on your own machine instead

The build needs something a fresh VM does not have: a local database, a device, a licensed toolchain, a dependency tree that takes twenty minutes to install.
Your source is not something you want cloned into a vendor environment, whatever the vendor's policy says.
You want one gate before code is written, not only one after. Reading a plan costs less than reading the wrong diff.
You run more than one agent CLI and want the same lifecycle over all of them.

What Denly adds on top of the CLI

The Codex CLI on its own gives you one terminal per project. Denly leaves the execution where it is and moves everything else to a dashboard you can open on a phone: the task list across projects and machines, the plan-approval gate and the review gate recorded, retries from the last step or on another runtime, recurring schedules, usage and cost per project and per person, and optional workspace end-to-end encryption over task text, plans, conversations and attachments.

Questions people ask

Does Denly run Codex?

Yes. Denly drives the OpenAI Codex CLI on your machine, alongside Claude Code, Cursor, Grok Build and Antigravity. You pick the runtime as a workspace default or per project, and a failed task can be retried on a different one.

Which one uses my ChatGPT plan?

Both. Codex cloud tasks meter against your ChatGPT plan on OpenAI's side; the Codex CLI on your machine uses the login already sitting there. Denly adds no inference charge of its own and does not resell tokens.

Does Denly's server see my source code?

No. The repository is cloned, edited, built and tested on your runner and is never uploaded. Denly stores stage, timing, cost figures, pull request links and repository slugs, plus the coordination text, which workspace end-to-end encryption turns into ciphertext the service cannot read.

Can I use both?

Yes, and for some teams that is the right answer. Codex cloud handles work that should run overnight while your laptop is closed; the local runner handles work that needs your environment, your database or your unpublished branch.