Elva vs Yap: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Elva and Yap — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
Elva
Theneo
Reads your repositories to discover every API, scores and governs them, then exposes them to developers and AI agents via hosted MCP servers.
Key features
- Spec-Free API Discovery: Elva scans repository code directly to find endpoints and generates OpenAPI 3.1 as output, so no existing spec is needed to start.
- Endpoint Scoring: Every collection is graded on design, developer experience, AI readiness, security and performance, with the weakest collection surfaced first.
- AI Fix Pass: A one-click agent writes missing descriptions from code, types response schemas and documents auth, then rescores the collection.
- API Contracts: Per-audience contracts pin the exact endpoints and fields a partner, internal team, public developer or MCP client receives, excluding PII and internal fields.
- Breaking Change Enforcement: Each commit is diffed against published contracts, showing the schema diff, affected consumers and tools, and blocking publish by policy.
- Hosted MCP Servers: Contracts generate MCP servers hosted behind Elva's gateway with OAuth2, scoped keys, per-tool authorization and exportable call logs.
- MCP Playground and Agent Feedback: Test the server with a live model, then read the complaints agents file about confusing or failing tools, scored back into the catalog.
- Multi-Target Publishing: One approved contract ships as OpenAPI spec, Theneo docs, MCP server, Postman collection and a typed TypeScript SDK in sync.
Best for
- API Inventory Audit: Discover undocumented or forgotten endpoints across a large codebase and get a ranked list of what to fix first.
- Agent Enablement: Expose an internal service to Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT as a governed MCP server instead of hand-writing tool wrappers.
- Partner Integration Safety: Publish a restricted contract to an external partner and have Elva block commits that would break their integration.
- PII Scoping: Keep customer emails and internal ops annotations out of a public or agent-facing surface while the same endpoints serve them internally.
- Zombie Endpoint Retirement: Prove no active consumer references an endpoint before deleting it, using contract and call-log evidence.
- Enterprise Security Review: Satisfy SOC 2, ISO 27001 and GDPR questions and wire agent access into an existing SSO and SCIM identity provider.
- Documentation Drift Control: Keep docs, SDKs and Postman collections regenerated from code on every merge instead of maintained by hand.
Yap
Frigade
Fast, private, open-source voice dictation for macOS that turns speech into text anywhere you can type, fully on-device.
Key features
- On-Device Transcription: Runs on Apple's on-device Speech framework so audio and transcripts never touch the network.
- Global Shortcut: One rebindable hotkey to start and stop dictation from any application on macOS.
- Pastes Into Focused Field: Text lands in whatever field you were in, whether Terminal, browser, chat app, or code editor.
- Works Offline: No network code at all, so you can dictate on a plane or with no signal.
- Local Searchable History: Every transcript is saved on the Mac and searchable for reuse.
- Homebrew Install: Distributed via Frigade's Homebrew tap for a one-command install on Apple Silicon Macs.
- MIT Open Source: Source code is on GitHub under the MIT license so you can audit or fork it.
- Private by Default: No account, no API key, no telemetry, and no audio leaving the machine.
Best for
- Prompting Coding Agents by Voice: Dictate longer prompts into Claude Code, Cursor, or ChatGPT without typing.
- Fast Slack and Email Drafting: Fire off Slack messages and emails hands-free while multitasking.
- Offline Dictation on Travel: Dictate notes on a flight or in a low-connectivity environment with no cloud dependency.
- Terminal Dictation: Speak commit messages or long shell commands directly into a terminal window.
- Privacy-Sensitive Writing: Dictate confidential notes, medical, or legal content that must never leave the machine.
- Everyday macOS Productivity: Replace typing in browsers, chat apps, and note-taking apps with voice for anyone who prefers speaking.
