Frigate is a specialist component for Docker and Home Assistant power users. Agent DVR is a complete, standalone surveillance application that works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Docker, and Raspberry Pi - no scripting, container knowledge, or additional infrastructure required.
Platform Support
| Feature | Agent DVR | Frigate |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | ✓ | ✘ (Docker only) |
| macOS | ✓ | ✘ (Docker only) |
| Linux | ✓ | ✓ (Docker only) |
| Docker | ✓ | ✓ (required) |
| Raspberry Pi / ARM | ✓ | ✓ (Docker) |
| Home Assistant integration | ✓ | ✓ (native add-on) |
| Standalone (no container) | ✓ | ✘ |
| Browser-based UI | ✓ | ✓ |
| Native mobile apps | ✓ iOS & Android | ✘ |
Pricing
| Feature | Agent DVR | Frigate |
|---|---|---|
| Free for local private use | ✓ Unlimited | ✓ Open source |
| Frigate+ (enhanced models) | N/A | ✓ $5/mo |
| Remote access subscription | ✓ from $7.95/mo | ✘ (self-managed) |
| Third-party cloud uploads | ✓ (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox) | ✘ |
| Commercial use | ✓ | ✘ (AGPL licence) |
Remote Access
| Feature | Agent DVR | Frigate |
|---|---|---|
| Built-in relay (no port forwarding) | ✓ | ✘ |
| Remote access out of the box | ✓ | ✘ (VPN / reverse proxy) |
| Push notifications | ✓ | ✓ (via Home Assistant) |
AI & Detection
| Feature | Agent DVR | Frigate |
|---|---|---|
| Object / person detection (AI) | ✓ Built-in + OpenVINO, ONNX, DeepStack, CodeProject, Blue Onyx & others | ✓ Built-in (YOLOv8 / MobileNet) |
| Learns from your feedback | ✓ On-device, instant | ✘ (Frigate+ requires uploading your camera images to the cloud, $5/mo) |
| Coral TPU support | ✘ | ✓ |
| LLM integrations | ✓ (ChatGPT, Ollama, Gemini…) | ✘ |
| AI assistant integration (MCP) | ✓ Built-in MCP server - Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini & any MCP client | ✘ (no built-in server) |
| Facial recognition | ✓ | ✘ |
| License plate recognition | ✓ | ✓ (Frigate+) |
| Audio recognition | ✓ | ✘ |
AI That Learns - Without Sending Your Images Anywhere
Both platforms can detect people, cars and other objects - but when the AI gets it wrong, the fix is very different. To improve detection accuracy, Frigate offers Frigate+: a paid cloud service where you upload snapshots from your cameras so a custom model can be trained on remote servers and downloaded back.
Agent DVR learns on your machine. Open any AI alert, and Agent asks "Did we get this right?" - mark a detection as wrong and Agent learns its appearance, automatically suppressing similar false alerts on that camera from then on. Confirm a detection and it's protected. The learning is instant, reversible, per-camera, and completely private: no images, snapshots or data ever leave your network.
Ask Your Cameras Questions - AI Assistant Integration
Agent DVR has a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, so you can connect Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor or any other MCP-capable AI assistant directly to your surveillance server and talk to it in plain language: "Has anyone been to the front door today?", "What happened in the garage last night?", "Arm the system." The assistant requests just the snapshots, recordings and alerts it needs, looks at them, and answers. Nothing is uploaded ahead of time and nothing is trained on your footage.
You can also create standing rules from a sentence - "tell me if a red car turns up in the next 6 hours" - and they run on your own server with no assistant connected. Local use is free; with an iSpyConnect subscription the same assistants can reach your cameras from anywhere over the secure relay, with no port forwarding. Frigate exposes an HTTP API and MQTT but has no built-in MCP server: connecting an AI assistant means writing or hosting your own bridge. Learn more about AI assistants for Agent DVR.
Evaluating for a company? See Agent DVR for Business.