Modulo vs GitHub native agent governance
GitHub now contains and orchestrates agents inside GitHub. Modulo governs the change across the tools it passes through, and keeps a record you can check yourself. Here is how the two compare.
Comparison table
| Dimension | Modulo | GitHub native |
|---|---|---|
| Scope of governance | Cross-tool. Governs agent activity across GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea, and Azure Repos, and chains into Jira, Linear, Notion, and any HTTP API, from one control plane. Agents move between tools through typed schema contracts. | GitHub only, now over a wider inside-GitHub surface. Org-wide policy for Copilot and agent activity, programmable agent workflows in Actions (Agentic Workflows, public preview June 2026), and local sandboxing for Copilot sessions (GA 7 October 2026). It still has no view of an agent acting in GitLab, Jira, Linear, or Notion. |
| Audit record | One hash-chained, append-only audit log covering every governance event - run start, agent dispatch, gate decision, human approval - plus a versioned snapshot per run (input, all agent outputs, human decisions, final artifact). Offline-verifiable evidence: a party holding only the export and a pre-published verification key can verify authorship, re-verify the embedded chain, and re-derive every derived value, with no vendor service involved. | Audit of Copilot and agent activity inside GitHub, generated by GitHub. A change that moves through GitHub and three other tools leaves its record spread across those tools, and re-checking it means going back to GitHub. |
| Deployment and data residency | Self-hosted on your infrastructure - your cloud, behind a VPN, or on a network with no route to the public internet. Telemetry off by default. Runs on your own Postgres. | SaaS. GitHub Enterprise Cloud offers data residency; the agent control plane runs in GitHub's environment. |
| Human approval gates | HITL gates pause a run at any step, across tools, not only at the merge. A reviewer claims the gate, inspects the artifact with full upstream context, and approves or rejects. The decision and approver are stamped into the audit chain. Approval can be required on writes, on every action, or per change class. | Required PR reviews and Actions environment protection rules. Enforcement happens at the GitHub boundary. |
| Autonomy model | Three levels per pipeline or node - manual approval, notify on complete, fully autonomous - set by you, with eval scores as the evidence for moving a pipeline to more autonomy. Token budgets, a spend circuit breaker, and an org-wide pause keep that autonomy bounded. | Org-level policy with allow/deny controls over Copilot and agent capabilities, plus sandbox policies the developer or their organization defines, which bound what an agent can touch while it runs. Containment while running, not a record of what shipped. |
| Typed handoffs between steps | An agent can declare an input and output schema. The engine validates input before dispatch and output after completion, so a malformed output stops at the seam rather than reaching a downstream tool. | No schema seam between agent steps. Agentic Workflows pass artifacts from one job to the next as written; nothing validates an agent output against a declared contract before it moves on. |
| Licensing and source | Source-available under BUSL. Public repository, inspectable source. Not OSI-approved open source. | Proprietary SaaS. |
| Pricing model | $12,000/year flat for the Team tier; Community edition free. No per-seat, no per-run meter. | Per-seat, packaged inside GitHub Enterprise / Copilot pricing. |
| Best fit | Teams that use GitHub alongside other tools and want one governance record spanning all of them, or that need the control plane on their own infrastructure. | GitHub-only shops that want orchestration, containment, and basic governance of Copilot and agent activity inside GitHub, and are comfortable with SaaS. |
Where GitHub's native controls end
GitHub's agent control plane does real work inside its own walls. It centralizes policy for Copilot and agent activity, gives an organization one place to see and restrict what agents may do in GitHub, and attaches to review rules the team already trusts. Since June it also runs programmable agent workflows in Actions (Agentic Workflows), and since 7 October its Copilot sessions run in a local sandbox whose filesystem, network, and credential access follow developer- or organization-defined policy. Copilot code review has been callable over the REST API since 2 October. For a shop that lives entirely in GitHub, that is a serious orchestration and containment story.
Containment and governance are different questions. A sandbox bounds the agent while it runs; it says nothing about whether the change that leaves the sandbox should have shipped, what happened in the tracker or the model gateway around it, or who approved it. The gap opens at the tools around GitHub. A change typically touches a tracker, a CI system, and a review tool besides the repository, and each keeps its own log. When a reviewer asks why an agent change shipped on a Tuesday, the answer is assembled from four systems that were never designed to agree on a timeline.
A platform's evidence chain records what that platform saw. Modulo records what happened — across every tool a change touches — in a chain you can verify yourself.
What Modulo adds
Modulo runs the pipeline around the agent: dispatch, typed handoffs between steps, gates, and the record. A change that starts as a ticket and ends as a merge passes through one pipeline, and every step writes to one hash-chained audit log with a versioned snapshot behind it. The pipeline can read from GitHub and write back to it, then move to the tracker without leaving the run.
What comes out is offline-verifiable evidence: a party holding only the exported record and a pre-published verification key can verify authorship, re-verify the embedded audit chain, and re-derive every derived value, with no vendor service involved. GitHub's record of the same change is generated by GitHub and can only be re-checked by GitHub.
Because Modulo is self-hosted, the control plane and the record run on your infrastructure. For a team whose code cannot leave the estate, that decides the question before the feature comparison starts.
GitHub stays authoritative
Modulo acts as a client of the GitHub API with the token you provide. Branch protection, required reviews, and CODEOWNERS still govern what reaches a protected branch, and Modulo's gates sit in front of the merge and work alongside those rules. A team keeps every GitHub rule it has, and gains a governed pipeline and a cross-tool record on top.
When Modulo is the better fit
- One governance record covering every tool a change touches, as offline-verifiable evidence rather than one platform's own event log.
- Self-hosted, with telemetry off by default.
- Typed schema seams that stop bad agent output at the workflow boundary.
- Human approval gates on any step, including steps outside GitHub.
- Bounded autonomy: you set each pipeline's autonomy level, and eval scores and gate history are the evidence for raising it.
- Flat annual pricing independent of seat count.
When GitHub native is the better fit
- Native to GitHub with no additional infrastructure to run.
- Org-wide policy for Copilot and agent activity available without a separate deployment.
- Programmable agent workflows in Actions and local sandboxing for Copilot sessions, so orchestration and runtime containment live where the code already is.
- Ties into the PR review, Actions, and environment protection surfaces a GitHub team already uses.
- Backed by GitHub's enterprise agreements, support, and data-residency options.
Try Modulo
Modulo is self-hosted. You can evaluate it without talking to anyone.
Questions? Open a discussion on GitHub.