Container Use vs Serena

A side-by-side comparison of two Developer Tools servers — tools, transport, auth, maintenance, and copy-paste config for each.

	Container Use Isolated, containerized dev environments for coding agents — each agent works in its own git branch. Unverified stdio (local) No auth Go	Serena LSP-powered coding agent toolkit: semantic symbol search, references and structural edits. Verified stdio (local) No auth Python
Category	Developer Tools	Developer Tools
Language	Go	Python
Transport	stdio (local)	stdio (local)
Auth	None	None
GitHub stars	3.9k	12k
Last commit	7 days ago	15 days ago
Verified
Actively maintained
Install	`brew install dagger/tap/container-use`	`uvx --from git+https://github.com/oraios/serena serena start-mcp-server`
Repo	Open	Open

Verdict

Pick Container Use if you want the official, vendor-maintained server.

Pick Serena if you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option, and you want a verified, documented setup.

Add Container Use

Install / run

brew install dagger/tap/container-use

Paste into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "container-use": {
      "command": "container-use",
      "args": [
        "stdio"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Add Serena

Install / run

uvx --from git+https://github.com/oraios/serena serena start-mcp-server

Paste into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "serena": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "git+https://github.com/oraios/serena",
        "serena",
        "start-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Requires `uv` (the Python package runner). Install it from https://docs.astral.sh/uv/ if `uvx` is not found.

FAQ

Container Use or Serena — which is better?

Pick Container Use if you want the official, vendor-maintained server. Pick Serena if you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option, and you want a verified, documented setup.

Can I use both Container Use and Serena?

Yes — MCP clients let you enable multiple servers at once. Add both configs to your client's mcpServers and use whichever tool fits the task.

Do Container Use and Serena work with Claude, Cursor and Windsurf?

Both do. Copy the per-client config below into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf.

View Container Use →View Serena →More comparisons →