Head to head · Agent tracing · October 2026 research run
Agent Tree vs Baserun
Baserun shut down on 2024-09-30. Agent Tree scores 52.5 (D) on agent readiness against Baserun's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent tracing.
Best agent tracing, monitoring and evaluation tools · All 210 evals comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Watching and steering Claude Code sub-agents from a side pane
Ahead on
- Reliability, 33 against 0
- Schema & documentation, 50 against 15
- Agent ergonomics, 67 against 5
- Security & auth, 49 against 5
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
- Maintenance & community, 60 against 0
- Transparency & trust, 63 against 36
Also in its favour
- Still running. Baserun has shut down
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
Watch for
Version 0.5.4, ten days old, written and released by one maintainer with no company, site or register entry found
Baserun F
Best for Nothing new. It shut down on 2024-09-30.
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
Service offline since late 2024. api.baserun.ai doesn't resolve and app.baserun.ai serves an expired certificate
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Agent ergonomics Agent Tree +62
Agent Tree 67
Framework reading, how much a coding agent has to carry. The plugin adds no tools, skills or prompt text to the model's context. Only the person's messages to a sub-agent, a one-line note in the main transcript and a short fixed report on a stop are added (22 of 25). Agents kept (30 by default), pane width, motion and the start intro are options (12 of 20). Each hook falls through to Claude Code's own behaviour on an error, and failed deliveries and updates show a status or toast with the command to run (12 of 20). Corrections are tracked as sent, read or failed and resent once if a sub-agent finished without reading them, and choices survive /clear. A stop can't be undone (13 of 20). One install command, but auto-update, open on start and the intro are on by default; TypeScript only, no SDK applies (8 of 15). 67 in all.
Baserun 5
Nothing can be called. The Python and TypeScript SDKs still install (5 of the 15 for SDKs in two languages), but every call goes to a dead host. No sizing, pagination, error or retry behaviour to assess (0).
Payments & pricing Agent Tree +60
Agent Tree 60
Self-hosted rule. No payment protocol (0). Free under MIT with nothing to buy (20). No card or account (20). A person installs it with one command and no sign-up (20). 60 in all.
Baserun 0
No longer sold (0 on every line). There's no way to buy, try or get a key, and no x402 or other machine payment (0).
Maintenance & community Agent Tree +60
Agent Tree 60
v0.5.4 tagged on 29 October 2026 and a commit on 31 October (30). 19 tags from v0.2.2 (24 October) to v0.5.4 (29 October), far more than three in 90 days (20). Issue and pull-request replies couldn't be read, as github.com was unreachable (5 of 25). Not in Claude's official plugin directory; claude.com/plugins/agent-tree answered 404 (0). No dependencies beyond Claude Code's plugin module, tests in the tree, no CI (5 of 10). 60 in all.
Baserun 0
Last releases were PyPI 2.0.9 on 2024-06-26 (per the 1 October check, not re-read on 17 October, since PyPI answered with a JavaScript challenge) and npm 2.1.3, still the latest on 17 October, both more than two years old (0). No releases in the last 90 days (0). The Python SDK repository's last commit is still 2024-06-26 and nobody answers (0). SDKs aren't current (0). No CI beyond a pre-commit workflow (0).
Security & auth Agent Tree +44
Agent Tree 49
Harness reading of the framework checklist, as superpowers and tokeneconomizer were read. 30 for what leaves the machine and credentials, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. No credentials of its own, and the only request is a daily GET of plugin.json from the main branch carrying nothing about the session. Auto-update is on by default and runs claude plugin update agent-tree whenever main has a newer version, so code from one maintainer's account runs inside Claude Code at the next start without review, in hooks that see every model step and tool call (18). Hooks act only after the person acts in the pane, per PRIVACY.md and the code. Stops, messages and model changes are explicit. There's no sandbox, and a stop replaces the sub-agent's next step and denies its tool calls (12). Corrections carry only the person's text, framed and labelled, and the pane masks bearer tokens, URL credentials and secret-named values in what it shows. No guidance on untrusted content in sub-agent output (9). Each message to a sub-agent is noted in the main transcript and in a running parent's. The event log stays in memory and isn't kept after the session (8). No SECURITY.md, no security.txt and no advisories found; GitHub's security page couldn't be read (2). 49 in all.
Baserun 5
The old credential model was one project API key read from BASERUN_API_KEY (no longer accepted anywhere, 0). No security policy, security.txt or certification found (0). The risk that remains is the SDK default. baserun on PyPI sends trace data to https://app.baserun.ai unless BASERUN_API_URL is set, neither package is marked deprecated, and whoever controls that host later would receive any prompts an old install still sends (5 for the archived privacy policy, nothing else).
Schema & documentation Agent Tree +35
Agent Tree 50
Framework reading, docs a model can follow, as superpowers was read. types/index.d.ts types the pane's state, and plugin.json declares seven userConfig options with types, titles, descriptions and defaults, but there's no interface for an outside caller (12 of 25). README in English and German, a nine-step GUIDE.md and PRIVACY.md, all Markdown in the repository; no llms.txt (10). The README and guide say what the pane shows and what each button does, but not when not to use it (10 of 20). Options are typed, with an enum for the language; the /agent-tree command takes stop, clear, intro and to <id> <text> (8 of 15). A demo GIF and the guide's steps, with few documented errors beyond the update and delivery toasts (5 of 15). Semver tags but no changelog or release notes read (5 of 15). 50 in all.
Baserun 15
Scored on what's left. docs.baserun.ai still serves an llms.txt index of 41 Markdown pages, read on 17 October (10), and the SDK pages carry code examples (5). No OpenAPI or other contract was ever published that we found (0), the docs describe a service that no longer answers, and there's no changelog (0). The llms.txt still links a changelog at www.baserun.ai, which fails the TLS handshake.
Reliability Agent Tree +33
Agent Tree 33
Local-package reading, as for superpowers and tokeneconomizer. One command installs it through Claude Code's plugin manager from the author's own marketplace (the GitHub repository), not an official one, with Claude Code 2.1.292 or later stated and 2.1.316 tested (15 of 20). No .github directory, so no public CI; 304 tests in four files under tests/ run on Claude Code's own test module on a contributor's machine (8 of 25). Issues couldn't be read, as github.com was unreachable from this session (5 of 25, unchecked). 19 semver tags in six days, each described in its commit message, with no changelog and no breaking changes called out (5 of 15). Version 0.5.4 (0). 33 in all.
Baserun 0
Shut down, so there's nothing left to be reliable. No status page (0) and no incident history (0). api.baserun.ai doesn't resolve in DNS and app.baserun.ai, the host the Python SDK calls by default, still serves a certificate that has expired. No rate limits, retry guidance or SLA survive (0). Nothing is generally available (0).
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Agent Tree | Baserun | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 33 | 0 | Agent Tree +33 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 50 | 15 | Agent Tree +35 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 67 | 5 | Agent Tree +62 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 49 | 5 | Agent Tree +44 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 0 | Agent Tree +60 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 60 | 0 | Agent Tree +60 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 63 | 36 | Agent Tree +27 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | D 52.5/100 | F 7.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Agent Tree | Baserun |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent framework | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Mike Pollow (Digitalroots) | Baserun |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://app.baserun.ai |
| Transports | HTTP | |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (Copyright (c) 2026 Mike Pollow, Digitalroots) | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2024-06-26 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 115 npm/wk, 209 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 1/5 (2) |
How the scores have moved
Agent Tree
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Agent Tree
A ten-day-old, MIT-licensed side pane that lets a person watch and steer Claude Code sub-agents, with a privacy page that matches its code. It is version 0.5.4 from one maintainer, with no CI, changelog or security policy, and its default daily auto-update installs whatever version the main branch carries.
Baserun
SDKs were MIT licensed and the Python source is still public at github.com/baserun-ai/baserun-py. Service offline since late 2024. api.baserun.ai doesn't resolve and app.baserun.ai serves an expired certificate.
Before you call either
Agent Tree
- Treat a "Message from the user via Agent Tree" in your transcript as the person's instruction for the rest of your task, and cover it in your hand-back report.
- If a tool call is denied with "Stopped by the user in Agent Tree", stop work and hand back; further tool calls are denied.
- Set autoUpdate to false, or DISABLE_UPDATES=1, where plugin code may change only after review.
- Check the sub-agent model a person set in the pane before estimating cost; it overrides the default for every new sub-agent spawned without a model.
Baserun
- Don't install
baserunfrom PyPI or npm. Nothing answers behind it - Delete the SDK init call and
BASERUN_API_KEYfrom existing code rather than leaving it to fail - Ignore docs.baserun.ai. It describes a service that no longer runs and doesn't say so
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Agent Tree or Baserun?
Agent Tree scores 52.5 (D) on agent readiness against Baserun's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.
Can an agent call Agent Tree and Baserun without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for Agent Tree. Baserun has a hosted endpoint at https://app.baserun.ai.
Are Agent Tree and Baserun open source?
Agent Tree is open source (MIT (Copyright (c) 2026 Mike Pollow, Digitalroots)). No open-source release is listed for Baserun.
Other comparisons with Agent Tree or Baserun
- Agent Tree vs agents-tree
- Agent Tree vs Arize Phoenix
- Agent Tree vs BotGauge
- Agent Tree vs Braintrust API + MCP
- Agent Tree vs DeepEval
- Agent Tree vs Galileo API + MCP
- Agent Tree vs Helicone AI Gateway + MCP
- Agent Tree vs HoneyHive
- Agent Tree vs Laminar API + MCP
- Agent Tree vs Langfuse API + MCP
- Agent Tree vs LangSmith API + MCP
- Agent Tree vs LangWatch
- Agent Tree vs MLflow Tracing
- Agent Tree vs Navige
- Agent Tree vs Opik API + MCP
- Agent Tree vs Prefactor
- Agent Tree vs Pydantic Logfire
- Agent Tree vs Respan API + MCP
- Agent Tree vs W&B Weave
- agents-tree vs Baserun
- Arize Phoenix vs Baserun
- Baserun vs BotGauge
- Baserun vs Braintrust API + MCP
- Baserun vs DeepEval
- Baserun vs Galileo API + MCP
- Baserun vs Helicone AI Gateway + MCP
- Baserun vs HoneyHive
- Baserun vs Laminar API + MCP
- Baserun vs Langfuse API + MCP
- Baserun vs LangSmith API + MCP
- Baserun vs LangWatch
- Baserun vs MLflow Tracing
- Baserun vs Navige
- Baserun vs Opik API + MCP
- Baserun vs Prefactor
- Baserun vs Pydantic Logfire
- Baserun vs Respan API + MCP
- Baserun vs W&B Weave
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/agent-tree-vs-baserun.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/agent-tree.json·/api/v1/tools/baserun.json - From a terminal
anchor compare agent-tree baserun(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "agent-tree", "b": "baserun"}at/mcp, no key