Difference between Obot and Lunar.dev
What is Obot?
Obot is an open-source, enterprise-grade AI control plane. It gives organizations a single point of control over their MCP servers, model and LLM access, Skills, users, access policies, and auditing from a single control pane. Obot provides a built-in LLM Gateway extends that same governance to external coding agents like Claude Code and Codex, so model access is managed under the same policies as MCP traffic, not as a separate concern. Obot runs entirely on infrastructure you control and can be deployed from a single Docker container up to a full Kubernetes/Helm deployment, with enterprise capabilities unlocked by a license key on the same open-source build rather than a separate product tier.
What is Lunar.dev?
Lunar.dev is an open-source platform for governing API, LLM, and MCP traffic. Its MCP-specific module, MCPX, acts as a single gateway that aggregates an organization’s MCP servers and enforces access control, tool customization, and observability across them. It’s self-hosted by design, deployable via Docker or Kubernetes/Helm, and its Enterprise tier adds a centralized control plane, a pre-production risk-evaluation sandbox for vetting MCP servers before they go live, automated risk scoring, and identity provider integration.
Feature Comparison
Deployment & Licensing
| FEATURE | OBOT | LUNAR.DEV |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted deployment |
Yes |
Yes |
| Open-Source |
Yes |
Yes |
| Simple Free-to-Enterprise Pathway |
Yes |
No – separate commercial offering |
MCP Server Management
| FEATURE | OBOT | LUNAR.DEV |
|---|---|---|
| MCP Catalog |
Yes – curated catalog |
Standard catalog – OSS, custom catalog – Enterprise |
| Aggregation Model |
Yes – composite MCP Server |
MCPX zero-code aggregator |
| Multi-user (shared) servers |
Yes |
No |
Authentication & Access
| FEATURE | OBOT | LUNAR.DEV |
|---|---|---|
| Basic SSO included |
Google & GitHub |
No – enterprise feature only |
| Enterprise IdP |
Basic SSO plus additional providers |
No Basic SSO – enterprise edition supports IdP providers |
| Role-based access control |
Yes |
Yes |
| Unified, capability-scoped API token model |
Single token model |
No |
Guardrails & Inspections
| FEATURE | OBOT | LUNAR.DEV |
|---|---|---|
| Tool Filtering |
Webhook filter |
Tool Customization |
| Network Egress Control |
Domain / IP allowlists |
No |
| Shadow AI Detection |
Yes – obot scan on user machine |
Enterprise Only – Agent Inventory |
| Pre-Production Sandbox |
No |
Enterprise Only – Evaluation Sandbox |
| Enforcement |
Detection only |
Enterprise Only – Agent Anomaly Alerts |
Models, Agents & Skills
| FEATURE | OBOT | LUNAR.DEV |
|---|---|---|
| Model Gateway |
Yes – LLM Gateway for Anthropic/OpenAI |
Separate Lunar AI Gateway product |
| Agent Builder |
Obot Chat |
No agent-building surface |
| Skills catalog |
Yes |
No equivalent |
Insights & Audit
| FEATURE | OBOT | LUNAR.DEV |
|---|---|---|
| Audit Logs |
Yes |
Yes |
| Dashboard, Exportable Metrics & Reports |
Yes |
Metrics available in OSS, Dashboard – Enterprise Only |
Conclusion
Lunar.dev offers a strong solution for teams looking for runtime governance and pre-production risk mitigation across API, LLM, and MCP server traffic. Lunar.dev is best suited for users and organizations that already have an established secrets management system in place and are looking for a solution to help them test and approve MCP servers before they reach production.
For users looking to build stronger governance across their AI tooling and infrastructure, Obot provides wider coverage through a single control plane. It enables enterprises to build governance and secure their AI stack through its ability to host and catalog MCP servers, alongside vetting Skills and agents, and managing user profiles, authentication, and model access, without the need to switch builds.
