The record of how agent systems are actually governed.
BAND and Buzz, evaluated for the organization rather than the individual: who verifies a delegation, who holds the audit trail, what the retention lines really say. Weights published, cells stamped, sources dated.
Desk review · ProvisionalBAND · leads
7.7
Wins 6 of 8 criteria
Buzz
4.7
Wins 2 of 8 criteria
Margin 3.0Governance 22Interop 18Architecture 16Change the weights, change the verdict.
BAND wins, and the arithmetic says why rather than the adjectives. It leads 6 of 8 criteria, and it leads every one of the three heaviest, which between them carry 56 of the 100 points. Buzz's wins are real but light: they carry 18 points of weight in total. Every cell below is scored from a public page dated 2026-08-19, and every cell carries a confidence stamp.
6 of 8
Criteria BAND leads
Buzz leads 2.
56 pts
Weight of the three heaviest
BAND leads all three.
18 pts
Weight behind Buzz's wins
Against 82 behind BAND's.
Section one
The scorecard
Eight criteria, weighted for the buyer who has to answer for a fleet. Governance and policy at 22 because someone has to authorize a delegation. Interoperability at 18 because the fleet is never one framework. Distributed architecture at 16 because thirty agents across two clouds is the case that breaks glue code. Bars are drawn on a shared baseline, so a long oxblood line on a heavy row is the whole argument.
- w22Governance and policyBAND leadsMedHigh
- w18Agent interoperabilityBAND leadsHighMed
- w16Distributed architectureBAND leadsMedHigh
- w12Observability and auditBAND leadsVerifyMed
- w10Security postureBuzz leadsVerifyHigh
- w8Enterprise operabilityBAND leadsHighHigh
- w8Total cost at scaleBuzz leadsVerifyMed
- w6Ecosystem maturityBAND leadsMedMed
Hover, tap or tab onto a score to read the weight, the points it contributes, and the evidence behind the cell.
How the score works
Each criterion is scored from 0 to 10 and carries a fixed weight. A criterion contributes its score multiplied by its weight, divided by 100. The eight contributions add up to the platform total, which is therefore also on a 0 to 10 scale.
Worked example. Governance and policy carries a weight of 22. BAND scores 8.5 there, so the row contributes 8.5 x 22 / 100 = 1.87 points of the 7.7 total. A high score on a light criterion moves the total very little, which is the point of publishing the weights first.
Every cell carries a confidence stamp. HIGH means stated plainly on a vendor page we cite with a date, or exercised by us. MED means documented but unexercised. VERIFY means a target rather than a fact, and it is scored conservatively.
Two criteria are weighted zero by design: self-hosting and data sovereignty. Both would favour Buzz. They would have to be worth more than 23.1 of the 100 points before the ranking changes. The methodology page lists every source.
Section two
The verdict in one figure
Each criterion plotted once: rubric weight on the horizontal, score on the vertical, the two platforms joined by a hairline. The separation widens as the criteria get heavier, which is the entire case in a single image.
Section three
Where the 3.0 point gap comes from
The margin is not spread evenly, and it is not a rounding artifact. Governance, interop and observability produce most of it; Buzz recovers on cost and on security posture, where its keypair identity and open source both count. If you want to dispute the verdict, this chart tells you exactly which cell to attack.
Sensitivity
Self-hosting and data sovereignty carry zero weight here, and both are Buzz's ground. Give them weight and rescale the published rubric: even assuming Buzz scores a perfect 10 on both and BAND scores 0, the verdict only flips once those two criteria are worth more than 23.1 of the 100 points. Below that line the ranking holds. Above it, you are buying sovereign infrastructure rather than governed infrastructure, and this record is not written for you.
The verdict in five lines
BAND 7.7, Buzz 4.7, under published weights (verified 2026-08-19). BAND leads 6 of 8 criteria, including the three heaviest (56 of 100 points). Buzz's wins carry 18 points combined, so the margin is 3.0 points. Self-hosting and data sovereignty are weighted zero by design, and would need more than 23.1 points of weight to flip the ranking. Source: bandvsbuzz.com/band-vs-buzz
Every figure above is generated from the same cells the page renders, so a copied summary cannot drift from the record.
Section four
The facts, side by side
Before the scores, the published record. Each line is what the vendor's own pages state, read on 2026-08-19.
| Fact | BAND | Buzz |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Hosted only. No self-hosted deployment published. | Desktop app on Block-hosted relays, or a relay you operate yourself. |
| Status | Generally available, with three published tiers. | Developer Preview, invite-only, 18+. |
| Framework interop | Eight frameworks named: LangGraph, Claude, OpenClaw, Parlant, Letta, Google, n8n, CrewAI. | Agents live inside Buzz communities. No cross-framework mesh claim. |
| Governance scope | Organizational: an interaction control plane is a named product layer. | Community: owners, admins, invitations, report flow. |
| Retention | 24 hours on Free, expired data may be lost. Custom retention at Enterprise, by quote. | 365 days of content retention on hosted relays, 5 GB media. |
| Export and audit | On-demand chat export from Pro. Audit surfaces not publicly documented in detail. | No audit-trail product or exportable organizational record described. |
| Identity | Account-based. Authority verification is a stated design target. | Keypair identity with signed verification and restorable backups. |
| Encryption | Not specified on the public pages verified. | Hosted-relay content not end-to-end encrypted; Block states access for operations, moderation, law. |
| Enterprise terms | Multiple users and teams, unlimited agents, Human and Memory APIs, dedicated support. | No enterprise tier, SLA, or admin plane published. |
| Attestations | None found on public pages at the verification date. | None published. Open-source repo allows independent inspection. |
| Price | $0, $17.99 per month, then custom quote. | Free during early access, with published caps. |
Read the full verdict, with the excluded criteria, the winner's weaknesses, and what a nine certifies.
Section five
The record, page by page
The platforms.
BAND's mesh and control plane, and Buzz's relay model, each read closely against what their own pages claim and what those claims would take to verify.
The gates.
BAND's pricing read as policy: twenty four hours of retention on Free, export at Pro, custom retention and the platform APIs at Enterprise, by quote.
The vocabulary.
Agentic mesh, interaction control plane, delegation authority: the glossary defines the terms precisely enough to engineer against.
Section six
Questions this record answers
What is BAND?
Hosted interaction infrastructure for multi-agent systems: an agentic mesh that lets agents from different frameworks share rooms with humans, and an interaction control plane that carries governance. Verified 2026-08-19.
Is Buzz suitable for enterprise agent fleets?
Not yet by its own description: it is an open-source Developer Preview with community-level moderation and no published enterprise tier. Its relay model is architecturally distributed; organizational governance is not built. Verified 2026-08-19.
Which should an organization choose?
Under our published weights, BAND at 7.7 to 4.7. BAND leads 6 of the 8 criteria, including all three of the heaviest, which carry 56 of the 100 points. A buyer who weights self-hosting and data sovereignty first is outside those weights, and the methodology page explains what changes.
What do the confidence stamps mean?
HIGH means the claim is stated plainly on a vendor page we cite with a date, or we exercised it ourselves. MED means it is documented but unexercised. VERIFY means it is a target rather than a fact, and the cell is scored conservatively until it is tested.
How often is this record re-verified?
Every claim carries the date it was read, currently 2026-08-19. Cells are re-read when a vendor page changes and on a scheduled pass, and every movement is logged with before and after values on the record page.
How much would the weights have to change before Buzz wins?
Self-hosting and data sovereignty carry zero weight here. Even assuming Buzz scores 10 on both and BAND scores 0, they would have to be worth more than 23.1 of the 100 points before the ranking flips.