ecco vs. Plane: Which is best for work you hand to AI agents? [2026]

Plane offers approval workflows; ecco asks every agent for evidence

In Plane, an agent you add as an assignee works the item and updates its state, the same way a teammate does. Plane's Enterprise plan adds workflows with approvals, and I think that's a reasonable design for teams of people. I couldn't find a rule in Plane's docs that asks an agent for evidence before it closes work.

With agents, I want that check every time. An agent can't move a task to review or to Done until it attaches a reference to the work: a pull request, a commit, or an evidence record. Evidence records you've rejected don't count. A reference doesn't prove the work is good, but it gives you something specific to check. People can still close their own tasks; the rule is for agents.

What it's worth: you spend less time finding out whether an agent's work happened. Every task an agent finishes carries a reference you can check, so when a client asks what shipped this week, you start from those references.

Plane AI asks before it acts; in ecco, only a person can answer an agent

Plane deserves credit here, and I think its default is the right one. When you ask Plane AI to make changes, it proposes them and waits for your confirmation, and Plane lets you define what needs human review. Its auto mode does both steps at once, and you review what was created afterward.

ecco starts from a different place: the agents are yours, like Claude Code, Codex or something you built, and they do the work. When a call belongs to you, the agent writes the question on the task with its options, the one it recommends, and why it didn't pick the others. Everything waiting on you lands in one inbox.

Two rules make that inbox trustworthy. The database refuses an answer from anything but a signed-in person, so an agent can't approve its own question. And if what the question was about changes before you answer, your answer is refused as stale, so no agent acts on a decision made against an older picture of the work.

The third rule came from my own complaint. The first version of the inbox kept asking me about decisions I'd already made with the agent in chat, and already shipped. "Why am I being asked in Inbox?" was my exact complaint. Now an agent can withdraw a question it has settled with you, so the inbox only holds what's still open.

What it's worth: agents can't approve their own questions, and your interruptions are limited to decisions that are still open.

Plane assigns work to agents; ecco gives each task one live claim

Plane's page puts it simply: "Add an agent as an assignee. Same as any teammate." Teammates sort out who's doing what by talking to each other. Agents working from the same board need that coordination built in, or two of them can start the same task and you pay for both.

In ecco, an agent claims a task before it works on it, and only one live claim is granted per task. The agent that loses is told who has the task, so it can pick up something else. Claims expire after five minutes by default unless the agent renews them, so if an agent crashes halfway through, its claim expires and another agent can take the task.

Each agent also gets its own access. You decide whether it can only read or can change tasks, and you can see on the Workers page which client and model it reports. A workspace admin can revoke it from the Workers page, and that connection is cut off on its very next request.

What it's worth: claims can cut the tokens you spend on duplicate work, a crashed agent's claim doesn't lock the task, and you can let a contractor's agent onto your board with only the access it needs.

ecco is focused on the work your agents do

Plane covers a lot of ground for teams of people: cycles, modules, views, pages for docs and analytics, and it's open source if you want to run it yourself.

ecco puts its effort somewhere else: the moment an agent, not a person, picks up the work. That's why every rule in this post exists, and it's why the board stays simple. You get tasks, projects and initiatives, one inbox for decisions, and the rules that keep agent work checkable. There's nothing to install or maintain, because ecco is a hosted service at heyecco.com.

Plane charges per seat; ecco charges per workspace

Plane is free for up to 12 users. Pro costs $6 per user a month billed yearly ($8 monthly) and includes 500 AI credits per seat. Business costs $13 per user a month billed yearly. For five people on Pro, that's $360 a year.

ecco is free while it's in beta. After the beta it's one plan: $79 a year per workspace, for up to 5 people and 25 connected agents. There are no AI credits to buy, because ecco never runs a model. Your agents run on the Claude or OpenAI plan you already pay for.

ecco or Plane: which should you choose?

The choice comes down to one question: who does the work?

If your agents do it and you make the calls, choose ecco. Every task an agent finishes carries evidence you can check, every decision waits for a person, and each task can have only one live claim at a time. At $79 a year per workspace after the beta, it costs less than Plane's Pro plan for any team of two or more.

If your team does most of the work itself and plans in cycles and modules, Plane is a good fit for that.

Plenty of teams will use both: Plane for the team's plans and docs, and ecco for the work they hand to agents.

Weighing other tools too? Read ecco vs. Linear, ecco vs. t0ggles and ecco vs. Claude and ChatGPT on their own. Ready to try it? Here's how to use ecco with Claude Code and how to use ecco with ChatGPT and Codex.