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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Agent Zero vs goose

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Agent Zero's 54.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 205 harnesses comparisons

Agent ZeroAgent Zero, s.r.o. · Agent harness C54.2/100#709 of 986 gooseAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block) · Agent harness BB73.9/100#81 of 986

Which one, for what

Agent Zero C

Best for A technical owner who wants an agent with its own Linux machine, reachable from Telegram, WhatsApp or email, with scheduled tasks and editable memory.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No approval step before shell commands, file changes or outgoing messages. Tool Access defaults to allow

goose BB

Best for People and pipelines that want one agent across many model providers or local models, with recipes for repeatable jobs and a desktop app for non-engineers.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 77 against 57
  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 64
  • Agent ergonomics, 82 against 62
  • Security & auth, 77 against 54
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 75
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 55

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Autonomous mode, which approves every tool call, is the default

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAgent ZerogooseEdge
Reliability16%205777goose +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26481goose +17
Agent ergonomics13%16.26282goose +20
Security & auth14%17.55477goose +23
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87586goose +11
Transparency & trust7%8.85563goose +8
Negative events≤15-6-2
TotalC 54.2/100BB 73.9/100

Facts side by side

FactAgent Zerogoose
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAgent Zero, s.r.o.Agentic AI Foundation (originally Block)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-232026-09-23
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity19k stars55k stars
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Agent Zero

Self-hosted under the MIT licence, with nine releases in the 90 days to 12 October 2026 and breaking changes listed in the release notes. The agent runs shell commands in its container with no approval step, the web interface has no login by default, and five CVEs from the past year have no published GitHub advisory.

goose

Telemetry off until the user opts in, with the collected fields listed. Autonomous mode, which approves every tool call, is the default.

Before you call either

Agent Zero

  1. Set a UI login and password in Settings before publishing the port or opening a tunnel. The default has none
  2. Fill allowed_users, allowed_numbers or sender_whitelist before enabling a channel. An empty list accepts every sender
  3. Enable the Infection Check plugin when the agent reads mail, web pages or MCP results. It ships disabled
  4. Run v2.12 or later. It fixes a Telegram webhook authentication bypass and a WhatsApp media path traversal
  5. Call POST /api_message with the X-API-KEY header. The token changes when the UI login or password changes

goose

  1. Set GOOSE_MODE=smart_approve or approve before a run. The default approves everything
  2. Pass --max-turns with a real limit. The default is 1000
  3. Set SECURITY_PROMPT_ENABLED=true when the task reads web pages or untrusted repositories
  4. Use --output-format json and --no-session in CI, and check the exit code
  5. Point remotes and links at aaif-goose/goose and goose-docs.ai. The block/goose paths redirect

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Agent Zero or goose?

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Agent Zero's 54.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are Agent Zero and goose open source?

Yes. Agent Zero is open source (MIT). goose is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Agent Zero or goose

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