Manta UI vs Orca

Orca runs coding agents on your desktop and gives you a window onto them. Manta runs the same agents on a box you own and gives every device an equal window. Both target the same buyer. Here is the honest difference.

Verdict

Pick OrcaIf you want 34 agent runtimes, a Monaco-based editor with Design Mode, and you only need your laptop. Orca is the more mature IDE today, and the only one of the two with a Windows or Linux desktop.
Pick MantaIf your agent should keep running after you close the laptop, your phone should be able to approve a command, and you want one self-hosted box rather than a desktop app you have to keep open.
OverlapBoth give you an agent chat panel, a worktree per session, and a real terminal. The trade-off is where the work lives.

Side by side

What is the same, and what differs

Rows we lose are kept in. Honest tables get quoted, rigged tables get ignored.

	Manta UI	Orca
Agents run on	Your box (Linux or macOS)	Your desktop
Architecture	Box is the source of truth	Desktop is the source of truth
Keeps running with every client closed	Yes	No
Phone client	The full app	Read-mostly view
Approve a command from your phone	One tap	Limited
Tells you when the agent is blocked	Push to the right device	No
Remote access	Detected and set up (Tailscale supported, not required)	Tailscale required
Permissions model	Explicit permission cards, yolo opt-in	`--dangerously-skip-permissions` pre-filled by default
Sandboxing	Commands ask first; trust-a-session for speed	Permission-bypass flag ships pre-checked
Diff review / inline annotation	No	Yes
Built-in code editor	Terminal + chat only	Monaco with Design Mode
Agent runtimes supported	2 (Claude Code, opencode)	34
Desktop OS coverage	macOS desktop (box runs on Linux or macOS)	macOS, Windows, Linux
Git worktree per session	Yes	Yes
Real tmux underneath	Yes, you can SSH in	No
Agent scheduling, webhooks, secrets	Yes	No
Account required	No	For mobile pairing
Licence	MIT	MIT
Maturity	New	29.6k GitHub stars, YC-backed
Open issues	Fewer	2,310
Price	Free	Free

Rows we lose stay in. Diff review, the built-in editor and 34 agent runtimes are the three things Orca does that Manta does not, and they are real.

Where Orca is better

The three things we would not want to fake

Stated plainly. If any of these is what you need, Orca is the right answer.

›Agent runtime count. Orca ships 34. Manta ships two today (Claude Code and opencode). If you want Cursor, Codex, Aider and the rest of the field on the same desktop, Orca is the answer.
›Built-in editor. Monaco with Design Mode lets you edit, preview and let the agent touch the same file. Manta gives you a terminal and a chat panel; your editor stays your editor.
›Diff review and inline annotation. Orca's PR/merge tail and inline comments back to the agent are the strongest part of the product. Manta has none of it.
›Cross-platform desktop. macOS, Windows and Linux. The Manta desktop is macOS only today; the box itself runs on Linux or macOS.
›Maturity. 29.6k GitHub stars, YC-backed, widely deployed. Manta is new and ships less surface.

Orca's own description of the mobile app: The mobile app is intentionally not a full editor — it's a remote control for the desktop you already have running. onorca.dev/docs/mobile

Where Manta is better

What the desktop-first model cannot give you

The architectural difference, not a list of features we both ship.

›The agent outlives the client. Close the desktop and the work keeps going. Orca's own docs say Closing the desktop app drops the connection — there is no cloud relay. onorca.dev/docs/remote
›The phone app is a real client. Same code as the desktop: full transcript, approvals, live command output, dictation, file uploads. Orca calls the mobile app a remote control.
›Yolo is not the default. Every command shows up as a permission card. Orca ships --dangerously-skip-permissions pre-filled for every agent, which is a different stance than ours.

Architecture

Where the work actually lives

Both products have a server process and a client. They disagree about which one is the source of truth.

Orca: the desktop is the source of truth

   Orca desktop app     ← owns tmux, files, agents
        │      │
   phone client   browser
  (read-mostly)   (read-mostly)

  close the desktop and the
  phone loses its session.

Manta: the box is the source of truth

   Linux box or Mac      ← owns tmux, files, agents
        │      │      │
   desktop   phone   browser
  (full app) (full)  (full)

  close every client and the
  work continues anyway.

Coexistence

Can I use both?

Yes. They are not exclusive, and they do not share state.

Orca runs on your laptop. Manta installs on the same Mac (acting as its own box) or on a Linux box on your tailnet. They use different ports, different tmux sessions and different project files. The most common setup we expect is Orca on the laptop for editor-heavy work and Manta on a VPS for long-running tasks that have to outlive the laptop.

FAQ

What people ask before they switch

Five questions, answered in full.

Is Manta a fork of Orca?

No. They are separate products with separate codebases. Both are MIT, both run Claude Code in a terminal, and the similarity ends there. Orca is desktop-first and ships 34 agent runtimes; Manta is box-first and ships two.

Does Manta run on any of Orca's agent runtimes?

No. Manta runs Claude Code and opencode in a real tmux session on your box. Orca's runtime count comes from packaging many agent CLIs into the desktop app; Manta does not do that today and would not benefit from the same approach because it does not own the editor.

Can Manta and Orca share a machine?

Yes, on a macOS box. They use different ports and different tmux sessions, so they do not interfere. On a Linux box the same applies; the desktop piece of Orca simply has no Linux desktop binary to launch there.

Why is Orca so much more mature?

Orca is older, has 29.6k stars on GitHub, and is YC-backed. Manta is a solo project and is younger. Maturity buys you a larger surface today (diff review, an editor, more runtimes, a Windows and Linux desktop) and a smaller backlog. We concede the comparison on maturity plainly.

Which one should I pick if my work runs locally?

Orca. Manta is for when the work needs to outlive the laptop, or when you want a phone client that can approve a command. If neither matters and your editor matters most, Orca's Monaco integration is the answer.