Factory (Droids) review

Factory builds Droids, coding agents meant to cover the whole software lifecycle: planning, building, reviewing, testing and shipping ¹. The same agent runs in the Factory App, the Droid CLI, the web, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Linear and CI ¹. On top of the core agent, Factory sells a 'software factory' that adds code review, security analysis, documentation, QA and incident response ²³.

The company raised a $150 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation in April 2026 ²¹, then $200 million at a $5 billion valuation in September 2026, taking total funding past $400 million ^20,23. It names Nvidia, Adobe, Palo Alto Networks, T-Mobile and RBC among its customers ²⁰.

You start a session in the desktop app or terminal and pick a mode: Normal to execute, Spec to plan read-only first, or Mission for long multi-feature projects ⁶. Autonomy Level (Off, Low, Medium or High) decides what runs without approval, and permission rules can allow, ask for or block specific commands ⁶. An optional OS-level sandbox limits writes to the working directory and network traffic to allowed domains ⁷. MCP servers, skills, hooks and custom subagents extend the agent ¹².

For background work, Droids run on persistent Droid Computers, either Factory-managed or your own machine ¹⁰. Teams can delegate from Slack, Linear, Jira and Microsoft Teams, and Droid answers with a session or pull request to review ⁹. A GitHub Action and a GitLab CI component run automated pull request reviews ¹¹. If a session goes wrong, rewind restores the chat and your files to an earlier point ¹³.

Individual plans cost $20 (Pro), $100 (Plus) and $200 (Max) a month ². Each is governed by rolling 5-hour, 7-day and 30-day rate limits; Plus gives about five times Pro usage and Max about ten times, but Factory does not publish the token allowance behind them ³. Models draw down usage at different multipliers, from 0.04x for GPT-6 Luna to 4x for Claude Fable 5.1 ⁵. When limits run out you can drop to the open-weight Droid Core pool at no extra cost, or buy prepaid Extra Usage from $10 that never expires ³. Missions only run with Extra Usage turned on ³. Teams costs $60 a month plus $40 per seat for up to 10 seats, so a five-person team pays $260 a month ². SSO, audit logs and zero data retention start on the quote-only Business plan ⁴.

Factory publishes SOC 2 Type I and Type II reports plus ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certificates in its trust center ¹⁸. The Droid CLI runs locally and does not upload or index a copy of your repository; prompts and context go to the model providers or gateways you configure ¹⁵. With enterprise endpoints such as Azure OpenAI, Bedrock and Vertex, traffic goes straight to the provider under contracts that support zero retention, and hybrid or airgapped deployments keep model traffic and telemetry inside your network ¹⁵. Business plans add zero data retention and audit logging, and Enterprise adds data residency and on-prem deployment ⁴. Factory says it does not use your code as training data ¹⁹.

Independent reviews are thin. Factory AI holds 4.5 stars from 37 G2 reviews on an unclaimed listing, and one reviewer praises the time saved but still checks every output ²⁵. On the independent Terminal-Bench 2.0 leaderboard, Droid with GPT-5.3-Codex ranks 10th of 142 entries at 77.3%, an unverified submission from February 2026 ²⁴. Factory names Nvidia, Adobe, EY, Palo Alto Networks, Adyen, T-Mobile and RBC as customers ^20,21.