OpenCUA is a powerful open-source toolkit that helps you create computer agents to automate tasks on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It comes with smart models and a big human-annotated dataset, letting agents click, type, and work across many apps just like a person. OpenCUA beats other open-source systems and almost matches top commercial agents in performance. It is easy to set up, works fast, and is trusted by companies since it is open and transparent. With more data and improvements, it could soon be the best at automating desktop tasks.
What is OpenCUA and why is it significant for building computer-use agents?
OpenCUA is an enterprise-ready, open-source toolkit for creating computer-use agents capable of automating tasks across Windows, macOS, and Linux. With production-grade models, a vast human-annotated dataset, and industry-leading benchmarks, OpenCUA enables transparent, scalable, and high-performance automation without proprietary restrictions.
XLANG’s newly published *OpenCUA * has quietly become the most complete open-source stack available for building computer-use agents that can drive a mouse, tap icons, fill forms or even compile code on your behalf. Published under the MIT licence and hosted on GitHub, the package delivers two production-grade models (7 B and 32 B parameters), a 22.6 k-trajectory training set that spans Windows, macOS and Linux, and an offline benchmark that the research community is already adopting as the de-facto yard-stick.
Inside the toolkit
| Component | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| OpenCUA-7B & 32B | Vision-language agents that accept screenshots + text and return executable UI actions |
| AgentNet dataset | 22 600 human demonstrations across 200+ apps and websites, all three desktop OSes |
| *AgentNetTool * | Annotation pipeline that turns raw screen recordings into labelled trajectories |
| *AgentNetBench * | Offline benchmark that scores models against human traces on OSWorld-Verified |
Benchmark snapshot (OSWorld-Verified, August 2025)
| Model | Average success rate |
|---|---|
| Claude 4 Sonnet (proprietary) | 41.5 % |
| Claude 3.7 Sonnet | 35.9 % |
| *OpenCUA-32B * | 34.8 % |
| OpenAI CUA (GPT-4o) | 31.4 % |
| UI-TARS-72B-DPO (open source) | 27.1 % |
| OpenCUA-7B | 26.6 % |
The table shows that OpenCUA-32B is the first open-source agent to edge past OpenAI’s own CUA system and narrow the gap to Claude-class models within two percentage points.
Why the numbers matter
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Scalability signal: XLANG reports that OpenCUA’s score climbs another 2-3 % when extra test-time “long chain-of-thought” reasoning steps are allowed, hinting that future hardware or cloud budgets will translate directly into higher accuracy.
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Cross-platform depth: Unlike earlier datasets that focused on Linux terminals, 48 % of AgentNet’s trajectories come from Windows and macOS environments, reflecting genuine enterprise desktop usage.
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Transparency play: By releasing the entire dataset and the offline benchmark, XLANG lets companies audit or fine-tune agents without shipping user data to external APIs, a point that has already attracted interest from regulated finance and health-care teams.
Quick start path
Researchers can grab the 32 B checkpoint from the releases page and reproduce the leaderboard numbers with a single python run_bench.py command; production teams can integrate the smaller 7 B variant behind an internal REST endpoint and expect sub-200 ms latency on an A100.
With the framework in public hands, the next milestone is beating Claude outright, something XLANG believes is a matter of “more demonstrations and larger context windows” rather than fundamental algorithmic leaps.
What exactly is OpenCUA and why should enterprises care?
OpenCUA is the first end-to-end open-source framework for building enterprise-grade computer-use agents (CUAs) – AI systems that can control computers exactly like humans by clicking, typing and navigating applications. Unlike proprietary solutions, enterprises get full transparency plus unlimited customization under the MIT license. The framework includes two production-ready models (7B and 32B parameters), the AgentNet dataset with 22.6k trajectories across 3 operating systems and 200+ apps, and enterprise tooling that bypasses vendor lock-in entirely.
How does OpenCUA-32B actually perform against proprietary alternatives?
Benchmark results from OSWorld-Verified (August 2025) show OpenCUA-32B achieving a 34.8% success rate – establishing a new open-source state-of-the-art. In direct comparisons:
– Exceeds OpenAI CUA (31.4%)
– Narrows gap with Claude 3.7 Sonnet (35.9%)
– Outperforms all previous open-source models by 10-30 point margins
The framework demonstrates strong test-time scaling – performance improves reliably as more demonstrations are added, making it uniquely suitable for enterprise workloads where accuracy gains over time are critical.
What makes the AgentNet dataset revolutionary for training CUAs?
AgentNet represents the largest publicly available CUA training corpus with 22,600+ human-annotated trajectories. Key differentiators include:
– Triple OS coverage: Windows, macOS and Linux environments
– Enterprise app depth: Includes 200+ applications and websites – from Excel macros to Salesforce workflows
– Real-world complexity: Covers edge cases like error handling, multi-window coordination and permission dialogs that break most domain-specific agents
This dataset enables enterprises to fine-tune agents specifically for their software stack without needing to collect thousands of internal demonstrations first.
How can organizations deploy OpenCUA without disrupting existing infrastructure?
The framework ships with AgentNetBench – an offline benchmarking suite that evaluates agents safely before any production deployment. Organizations can:
– Test agents offline against human demonstration data
– Validate performance across specific OS/application combinations
– Deploy incrementally starting with low-risk workflows like data entry or report generation
– Maintain full control – the MIT license means no usage restrictions or forced cloud dependencies
What is XLANG’s role and how sustainable is the OpenCUA project?
XLANG AI operates as part of the HKU NLP Group with backing from Google Research, Amazon AWS and Salesforce Research via research grants. While not a traditional startup, the project benefits from:
– Active maintenance with weekly GitHub updates
– Growing contributor base – the repository shows consistent community contributions
– Academic rigor – benchmarks and code undergo peer review, ensuring reliability for critical deployments
This research-backed approach provides unique stability compared to commercial open-source projects, though enterprises should note this isn’t backed by venture capital funding cycles.
