# HQ wants to be your company's operating layer for AI. Is that the same as an AI teammate like Maito? And what does each cost a team? Source: https://maito.app/compare/maito-vs-hq Date: 2026-10-14 Author: Dmitry Dubovetzky Maito vs HQ: HQ gives your AI tools shared company files, credentials, and persistent bots for Slack and email, with a free Starter plan and a $500 Workforce plan. Maito is one managed AI teammate your whole company works with in Slack and its AI assistants, for code and business work, at $149 per workspace per month plus your AI provider's usage. ## Is HQ the same as Maito? **No. HQ is a company operating layer for AI: shared files, workflows, credentials, connections, and persistent bots that your team's AI tools work on top of. Maito is one managed AI teammate the whole company works with in Slack and its AI assistants.** They overlap more than they look. Both give AI clients such as Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and Codex access to company knowledge, both run bots in Slack, and both do business work and code. HQ hands you the parts and lets you assemble them: Core, Cloud, Integrations, MCP, and Bots. Maito comes as one teammate. Maito costs $149 per workspace per month, plus your AI provider's usage and any cloud credits beyond the included $20. HQ is free for up to five people, and its Workforce plan is $500 per month, with hosted bots priced separately. ## What is HQ? **HQ keeps your company's knowledge, skills, projects, workers, and policies in ordinary files, and gives the AI tools your team already uses access to them.** Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor work in HQ's company directory, and chat clients reach it through HQ MCP. HQ Cloud syncs approved context, skills, and connections across people and machines, and surfaces conflicts instead of silently overwriting. Credentials are stored once and provisioned to people, groups, and bots without handing out the key. [HQ Core](https://hqforwork.com/products/core), [HQ Cloud](https://hqforwork.com/products/cloud), [HQ Integrations](https://hqforwork.com/products/integrations). ## And does HQ have bots? **Yes. HQ Bots are persistent teammates with their own identity, role, memory, connections, and runtime, working in Slack and email and starting work from schedules or company events.** A Worker is a reusable job definition, and a Bot is the persistent identity that runs it. Bots can run on your own machine for free, or in a hosted box from $100 a month, on any plan including Starter. [HQ Bots](https://hqforwork.com/products/bots), [HQ FAQ](https://hqforwork.com/faq). ## And what is Maito? **Maito is one managed AI teammate your company names and shares, in Slack and in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex, Grok, and Muse.** Nobody assembles it. You connect an AI provider, Slack, and the tools a task needs, and anyone in an invited channel can ask. It learns company facts and skills from shared work, runs Loops, and does coding tasks in their own sandboxes with checks and a pull request. [How Maito works](/homepage). ## How do Maito and HQ compare at a glance? **HQ is a set of parts for running AI across your company, with portable files and a free small-team plan. Maito is one ready teammate for code and business work, at $149 per workspace, plus your AI provider's usage.** | | Maito | HQ | | ----------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | | What it is | A managed AI teammate for your company | A company operating layer for AI tools and bots | | Where you use it | Slack, Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex, Grok, and Muse | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, chat clients, Slack, and email | | Who does the work | Maito, on the AI provider and model you choose | Your AI tools, or HQ Bots you deploy | | Business tasks | Yes: Research, reports, follow-ups, and work in your connected tools | Yes: Reports, apps, and work through bots and connections | | Code changes | Yes: Sandbox, checks, browser QA, and a pull request | Yes: Through Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or a bot | | Company knowledge | Yes: Learned from shared work, with revision history | Yes: Files your team edits, synced through HQ Cloud | | Recurring work | Yes: Loops on a schedule, from a webhook, or on request | Yes: Bots on schedules and company events | | Price | $149 per workspace, unlimited people, plus provider usage | Starter free to five people; Workforce $500; bots from $100 | ## What do Maito and HQ do with a business task? **Both can run a business task from Slack. In HQ, a bot you deployed or the AI tool someone opens does it with HQ's files. In Maito, the same teammate everyone uses does it, and the next person continues in the same thread.** _Illustrative conversation:_ > **Ben:** @Maito which wholesale accounts haven't reordered in 60 days, and which of them were promised the new price list? > > **Maito:** 14 accounts haven't reordered. Six were promised the new price list in September, and none of them got it. > I drafted the price list email for those six from the sales inbox. The other eight are listed with their usual order size. HQ's own customer story describes the same kind of shared reporting across wholesale, inventory, and marketing. [HQ and Bogey Bros](https://hqforwork.com/case-studies/bogey-bros). ## And what do Maito and HQ do when a customer reports a bug? **In HQ, the coding tool or bot you choose fixes the bug with HQ's context. Maito handles the whole bug as one job, from the report to a tested pull request and the reply.** _Illustrative conversation:_ > **Maya:** @Maito a customer's store shows "out of stock" for a product that has 120 units. Ticket #5528. > > **Maito:** Reproduced. The product has two variants, and the stock check only reads the first, which is at zero. Video attached. > PR #618 sums stock across variants and adds a test with two variants. QA passed on the preview. > Reply to the customer is drafted below. ## Doesn't HQ remember more? **HQ keeps knowledge as files your team writes, owns, and can carry to any AI tool. Maito learns from shared work as it happens, and your team corrects it by asking.** HQ's files are inspectable and portable, which matters if you switch AI tools often. [HQ Core](https://hqforwork.com/products/core). Maito learns facts from shared work, such as a pricing rule or how a feature behaves, and saves good results as skills. It keeps revision history, and you can ask it to remember, correct, forget, or restore a fact. Private conversations don't teach the company anything unless someone asks to share it. [Maito FAQ](/faq). ## What do Maito and HQ cost? **Maito costs $149 per workspace per month with unlimited people, plus your AI provider's usage and any cloud credits beyond the included $20. HQ is free for up to five people, Workforce is $500 per month, and hosted bots cost from $100 per month each on any plan.** **Maito: $149 per month + provider usage** - One workspace, unlimited people - One shared AI teammate, Loops, and skills - $20 in included credits for coding sandboxes and web search **HQ Workforce: $500 per month** - Unlimited people, storage, and hosted MCP - Hosted bots: $100, $250, or $500 per month each - Self-run bots free; meeting capture $1 per hour Compare the setup you'd actually run. A five-person team on HQ Starter with one Basic hosted bot pays $100 a month for the bot. A larger team on Workforce with one hosted bot pays at least $600. Either way, your AI tools' own subscriptions or model usage come on top. [HQ pricing](https://hqforwork.com/pricing), [HQ FAQ](https://hqforwork.com/faq). ## When is HQ enough? **HQ is enough when your team wants its knowledge and credentials shared under the AI tools each person already uses, and someone is happy to set up and maintain the parts.** ## So should you choose Maito or HQ? **Choose Maito for one managed AI teammate your whole company works with, for code and business work, without assembling it. Choose HQ if you want portable company files and credential sharing under your own AI tools, with bots you configure.** **Choose Maito if:** - You want one teammate, not a set of parts to assemble - The whole team should work in the same Slack threads - Code changes should come back with checks and QA - Your team is past five people and growing **Choose HQ if:** - Company knowledge must live in files you own - Each person works in their own AI tool - A technical person will set up and maintain it Give one recurring report and one bug to both setups. Compare the result, and the hours someone spent getting each one running.