Head to head · Verified 2026-08-11
Kodus vs What The Diff
Kodus covers more of the baseline (6.5/9 vs 1/9), but the split matters more than the total. Everything below comes from each vendor's public documentation, mapped against the same 9 standards.
Kodus
AI PR Review
Open-source AI code review built to run where the organization controls: self-hosted or cloud, models under your keys, org-wide Kody Rules.
- Licence
- Open source
- Self-hosting
- Self-hostable
- From
- $10/dev/mo
What The Diff
AI PR Review
Writes PR descriptions from the diff, sends changelog notifications to stakeholders, and does small /wtd refactors on GitHub and GitLab.
- Licence
- Proprietary
- Self-hosting
- Cloud only
- From
- $19/mo
The short answer
Across the 9 standards, Kodus is better documented on 8 (context depth, rule control, local and PR review, business-logic checks, learning from your team, sandbox validation, cost control and ROI reporting), What The Diff on 0 (none), and 1 come out even.
On deployment they are not interchangeable: Kodus is fully self-hostable on a standard plan, while What The Diff is cloud-only. If code cannot leave your network, that single row decides the evaluation before anything else on this page.
Kodus publishes its source under AGPL-3.0 (dual-licensed; enterprise-marked files commercial); What The Diff is proprietary. That changes what you can audit, fork, and keep running if the vendor's terms change.
Pick Kodus if you care most about context depth, rule control and local and PR review, the reviewer has to run inside your own infrastructure and you want to read the source before you trust it.
Pick What The Diff if its documented coverage lines up with how your team already works.
Side by side
| Fact | Kodus | What The Diff |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing • | Open source — AGPL-3.0 (dual-licensed; enterprise-marked files commercial) | Proprietary |
| Self-hosting • | Yes — full stack | No |
| Free tier | Limited free tier | Limited free tier |
| Pricing • | Free Community cloud tier (BYOK, up to 10 Kody Rules); Teams $10/dev/mo + your token costs; Enterprise custom; self-hosting free under AGPL | Free: 25,000 tokens/mo (~10 PRs); Pro $19/mo: 200,000 tokens (~40 PRs). Token-metered (avg PR ~2,300 tokens); no rollover |
| Model control • | BYOK on every plan: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Vertex, Novita, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (vLLM/Ollama); zero token markup | Fixed vendor model; no BYOK or model choice documented |
| Platforms • | GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps, Forgejo | GitHub, GitLab |
| Last verified | 2026-08-11 | 2026-08-11 |
• marks a row where the two genuinely differ.
All 9 standards
✓ documented · ~ partial · ✗ not offered · ? undocumented. The arrow marks which tool documents more on that standard — it is not a quality judgement, only a coverage one.
Kodus: Repo-level analysis plus linked sibling repos; pulls business context from Jira, Linear, and Notion.
What The Diff: Explicitly diff-only: analyzes the PR diff to write a description; not a bug-finding reviewer.
Kodus: Plain-language Kody Rules with global-repo-directory scope; auto-imports .cursorrules, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, etc.
What The Diff: No custom rules or noise controls documented.
Kodus: Reviews run via CLI locally, in CI, and on PRs; distinct local-vs-PR behavior modes not detailed publicly.
What The Diff: PR surface only; no IDE, CLI, or pre-commit mode.
Kodus: Pulls context from Jira, Linear, and Notion to check a PR against what the ticket asked for.
What The Diff: No issue tracker integration documented.
Kodus: Kody generates rules automatically by analyzing team review history; rules and review history persist.
What The Diff: No learning from developer feedback documented.
Kodus: No documented sandbox execution or runtime validation of findings.
What The Diff: No code execution or test running documented.
Kodus: BYOK on every plan, zero token markup, published cost estimates, token-usage dashboard.
What The Diff: No BYOK, but usage is metered in visible tokens with published per-PR averages (~2,300 tokens/PR).
Kodus: Provides fix suggestions in reviews; one-click commit flow not verified in the posts we checked.
What The Diff: On-demand /wtd comments produce small refactor suggestions in the PR; no review-driven fixes.
Kodus: Token-cost and usage dashboard documented; DORA-style ROI reporting not verified in public posts.
What The Diff: Weekly progress report notifications only; no acceptance, DORA, or cost dashboards.
Kodus vs What The Diff: FAQ
What is the main difference between Kodus and What The Diff?
Kodus covers more of the baseline (6.5/9 vs 1/9), but the split matters more than the total. Kodus is fully self-hostable on a standard plan and open source under AGPL-3.0 (dual-licensed; enterprise-marked files commercial); What The Diff is cloud-only and proprietary.
Is Kodus cheaper than What The Diff?
Kodus starts at $10/dev/mo and What The Diff at $19/mo, as published by each vendor on 2026-08-11 and 2026-08-11. Compare total cost rather than seat price: Kodus bills models as byok on every plan: openai, anthropic, gemini, vertex, novita, or any openai-compatible endpoint (vllm/ollama); zero token markup, What The Diff as fixed vendor model; no byok or model choice documented.
Can Kodus and What The Diff be self-hosted?
Kodus: Yes — full stack — Free under AGPL via Docker Compose, VM, or Kubernetes/Helm; no seat minimums; optional daily heartbeat can be disabled. What The Diff: No
Do Kodus and What The Diff support the same platforms?
Both document support for GitHub and GitLab. Kodus additionally documents Bitbucket, Azure DevOps and Forgejo; What The Diff adds nothing else.
Which one scores higher against the 9-pillar standard?
Kodus scores 6.5/9 against 1/9. The score is coverage of documented capability, not quality of findings — the full formula is on the methodology page.
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