Head to head · Hitl approve · October 2026 research run
gotoHuman vs Restate
Restate scores 73.3 (BB) on agent readiness against gotoHuman's 43.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do hitl approve.
Which one, for what
Good for A team that wants a ready reviewer inbox where people edit AI output before it ships, without building a UI.
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
No status page, published rate limits or documented error responses
Restate BB
Good for A team that already writes agent steps as durable handlers and wants a long, cheap wait for a human answer in TypeScript, Python, Java, Go or Rust, with the option to self-host.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 91 against 20
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 49
- Agent ergonomics, 81 against 62
- Security & auth, 61 against 44
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 92 against 64
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
No reviewer inbox, Slack app or email. The approval request and the reply endpoint are the builder's code
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | gotoHuman | Restate | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 20 | 91 | Restate +71 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 49 | 85 | Restate +36 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 62 | 81 | Restate +19 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 44 | 61 | Restate +17 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 40 | Restate +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 64 | 92 | Restate +28 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 52 | 50 | gotoHuman +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 43.6 · E | 73.3 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | gotoHuman | Restate |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | gotoHuman | Restate GmbH |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.gotohuman.com | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs and MCP server) | BSL 1.1 converting to Apache-2.0 four years after release (server), MIT (SDKs) |
| Tools exposed | 3 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-24 | 2026-10-01 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 4.5k stars, 329k npm/wk, 76k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |
Verdicts
gotoHuman
Built for agent review, with TypeScript and Python SDKs, a 3-tool MCP server, an n8n node and a Make app. No status page, published rate limits or documented error responses.
Restate
An awakeable pauses a handler at no compute cost and resumes it from one HTTP request, with a durable timeout, on a free plan of 100,000 actions a month. Restate sends nothing to the approver, so the Slack message, email or inbox is the builder's code, and the published terms and privacy statement predate the paid plans.
Before you call either
gotoHuman
- Call
get-form-schemabeforerequest-human-review-with-form, since the field data must match the review type - Send
agentIdon every API request, because the API reference marks it required even though the JS SDK doesn't - Pass a
webhookUrlper request when the review type has no default, or the answer has nowhere to go - Deduplicate webhook calls on the
Idempotency-Keyheader, since delivery is at least once - Set your own deadline on the agent side and treat silence as a rejection
Restate
- Create the awakeable, send its ID inside
ctx.run, then await the promise, so a retry doesn't send a second approval request - Resolve with
POST /restate/awakeables/<id>/resolveand a JSON body, or/rejectwith a text reason, which throws a terminal error in the handler - On Restate Cloud send
Authorization: Bearer key_...tohttps://<env_id>.env.<region>.restate.cloud:8080. On a self-hosted server put an authenticating proxy in front of port 8080 - Wrap the wait in
orTimeoutand decide what a timeout means. Without it the handler waits with no limit - Retry ingress errors only on 408, 425, 429 or 5xx, and only when
x-restate-error-sourceisn'tinvocation
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, gotoHuman or Restate?
Restate scores 73.3 (BB) on agent readiness against gotoHuman's 43.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Can an agent call gotoHuman and Restate without installing anything?
gotoHuman has a hosted endpoint at https://api.gotohuman.com. No hosted endpoint is listed for Restate.
Other comparisons with gotoHuman or Restate
- gotoHuman vs Inngest
- gotoHuman vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks
- gotoHuman vs Permit MCP Gateway
- gotoHuman vs Pushary
- gotoHuman vs Temporal
- gotoHuman vs Trigger.dev
- Inngest vs Restate
- Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Restate
- Permit MCP Gateway vs Restate
- Pushary vs Restate
- Restate vs Temporal
- Restate vs Trigger.dev
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/gotohuman-vs-restate.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/gotohuman.json·/api/v1/tools/restate.json - From a terminal
anchor compare gotohuman restate(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "gotohuman", "b": "restate"}at/mcp, no key