Remote control for coding agents, compared
Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Copilot CLI have each shipped a way to drive a session from your phone. They are four separate features, one per agent, and what they ask of you differs. Here is what each one's own documentation says.
Last checked: September 22, 2026. Every line below comes from the vendor's own documentation, linked in the table. All four are being worked on, and lines this page draws today may stop being lines. Read their docs before you decide rather than trusting a comparison page, including this one.
| Remote control | Reaches | You drive it from | Where the agent loop runs | Their docs also say |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic Remote Control | A Claude Code session | claude.ai/code, Claude for iOS and Android | Your machine | Sign in through claude.ai. API keys are not supported, and neither are Bedrock, Google Cloud's Agent Platform, Microsoft Foundry, or an ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL pointed at a gateway. |
| OpenAI remote connections | A ChatGPT desktop host | ChatGPT for iOS and Android, or another desktop | Your machine | The phone side can't be set up from the Codex CLI or IDE extension. The host has to stay awake, online and signed in. |
| Cursor Remote Control | A Cursor agent on your computer | Cursor for iOS, and the web | Cursor's cloud. Their words: the agent loop moves to the cloud while its tools keep running on your machine | Cursor 3.9.8 or later, cloud data storage allowed, and Remote Control enabled in the Agents Window. A Git remote is not required. |
| GitHub Copilot CLI remote control | A Copilot CLI session | github.com and GitHub Mobile | Your machine | Interactive sessions only, and some slash commands are not available remotely. An org seat needs the Store local sessions in the Cloud policy set. |
| TermLink | The machine, and any session on it | Any browser, including a phone | Your machine | The termlink start process has to stay running. Sessions relay through a server we operate. Free runs two at a time, Pro eight at $9.99 a month. |
What the table is actually showing
Read it down the first column rather than across. Each row is a feature of one agent, built by the company that makes that agent.
That is the sensible thing for them to build, and for most people it is the whole answer. If Claude Code is what you use, Remote Control is right there, it is free with the subscription you already pay for, and nothing in this page is an argument against using it.
The shape only becomes awkward when you use two. Then the phone in your pocket has Claude in one app, Codex in another, Cursor in a third, and the thing you actually wanted to know is which of them is sitting on a question right now.
Where TermLink sits
One step lower down. TermLink reaches the machine, so what lands in the list is a session rather than a particular vendor's conversation.
Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor Agent and GitHub Copilot CLI all run here, on by default, each keeping its own approval prompts. So does a plain terminal, which is where the test run and the log you are tailing end up. One list, one sign-in, whatever mix you happen to work with.
It is a different unit of work, and that cuts both ways. A first-party remote control knows things about its own agent that a session manager does not, and it will keep learning more of them. What it will not do is show you somebody else's agent.
The fuller write-up of one of these is on TermLink vs Claude Code Remote Control, the general case is managing multiple Claude Code sessions, and the same ground for OpenAI's agent is on Codex CLI remote access.
Does anything here overlap?
Yes, and using both is fine. Remote Control is part of Claude Code; TermLink is a way to reach the machine Claude Code is running on.
Plenty of people will open whichever is nearer to hand for a given task. Nothing about running the TermLink host stops any of the four first-party remote controls from working on that same machine.
What we are not claiming
Three things, because this page is easier to get wrong than it looks.
That any of them is worse. Each of the four does its own agent more thoroughly than we do, and they are all shipping quickly. We have retracted four comparison claims on this site already, every one of them because we described a competitor from something other than their documentation.
That this is a security boundary. Answering approvals for you is a convenience. Where the real boundary lives is on the security page.
That the table is complete. It holds what four sets of docs said on one day. If you find a line here that has gone stale, we would rather hear about it than leave it up.
TermLink is free to try with two sessions at a time. Install the CLI on the machine your code lives on, or open the app first and have a look.
More on the approval settings in Auto-Yes, and on what runs where in how it works.