25 May 2026 · The minion.sg team
Self-hosted vs managed AI agents: which should you choose?
TL;DR
Run your AI agent yourself, or let a platform manage it? A practical comparison of control, cost, security and time-to-value.
You've decided to put an AI agent to work. The next question is where it runs — do you self-host it, or use managed agentic hosting? Here's how to choose.
Self-hosted AI agents
You rent a VPS or cloud account, install an agent framework (LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI…), wire up model keys, build the channel integrations, and maintain all of it.
- Pros: maximum control and customisation; everything lives in your account.
- Cons: real DevOps burden — provisioning, security patching, secrets management, monitoring, and keeping integrations alive. Time-to-value is measured in weeks, and the maintenance never stops.
Managed agentic hosting
A platform provisions a dedicated, sandboxed VM per agent, attaches frontier models, connects your channels, ships safe tools, and keeps everything patched. You describe the goal; it runs.
- Pros: live in minutes, no ops, secrets kept safely off the agent's machine, security handled for you.
- Cons: you work within the platform's guardrails (which is usually the point).
How to decide
| If you… | Choose |
|---|---|
| Have a DevOps team and a bespoke, deeply-integrated need | Self-hosted |
| Want real work done now, without babysitting infrastructure | Managed |
For most businesses — especially SMEs without a platform team — managed wins because it turns an AI project that might never ship into a working agent today.
minion.sg is managed agentic hosting: every minion gets its own VM, runs sandboxed, and is live in about four minutes. See how it works or hire your first agent.