# Agent Zero vs Jules

> Agent Zero scores 54.2 (C) to Jules's 44.5 (E) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-18

Agent Zero scores 54.2 (C) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation. Both do agent harnesses.

- Agent Zero: grade C, 54.2/100, rank #775 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/agent-zero.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/agent-zero.json
- Jules: grade E, 44.5/100, rank #1000 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jules.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jules.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 713 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Agent Zero (C)

Good 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.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 57 against 13
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 18
- Transparency & trust, 55 against 44

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

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

### Jules (E)

Good for: A person or pipeline that wants to hand scoped GitHub tasks to a cloud agent and collect a pull request or a patch, or run a repoless job in a disposable VM.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 76 against 64

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- No incidents deducted, where Agent Zero loses 6 points for them

Watch for: The REST API has been v1alpha since 3 October 2025 and the docs say specifications and API keys may change


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Agent Zero | Jules | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 57 | 13 | Agent Zero +44 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 64 | 76 | Jules +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 62 | 64 | Jules +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 57 | Jules +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 30 | Agent Zero +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 75 | 18 | Agent Zero +57 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 55 | 44 | Agent Zero +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -6 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.2 · C** | **44.5 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Agent Zero | Jules |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Agent Zero, s.r.o. | Google LLC |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service under the Google Terms of Service. The TypeScript SDK is Apache-2.0; the CLI binary is closed |
| Tools exposed | none | 8 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-23 | 2026-03-09 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-07-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 19k stars | 1.3k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |

## 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.

**Jules.** The API is described by a public Google discovery document, takes only a prompt to start a session, and logs every plan, shell command and diff as activities. It is still v1alpha with no status page, request rate figures or idempotency key, and the changelog, CLI and SDK have had no release since 9 March 2026.

## 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

### Jules

1. Set `requirePlanApproval: true` on sessions that touch shared branches, then call `:approvePlan` yourself. API sessions otherwise run their plan without review
2. Session creation has no request ID. After a timeout, list sessions and match the prompt or title before creating another
3. Poll activities with a `create_time` filter and cache them. Activities never change once written
4. Read the request fields from the discovery document at https://jules.googleapis.com/$discovery/rest?version=v1alpha. The field tables on jules.google render empty
5. Budget against the daily task quota of 15, 100 or 300 by plan. New sessions are refused until the rolling 24 hours reset

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Agent Zero or Jules?

Agent Zero scores 54.2 (C) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation.

### Are Agent Zero and Jules open source?

Agent Zero is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Jules.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-jules.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-jules.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "agent-zero", "b": "jules"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare agent-zero jules`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/agent-zero.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jules.json

## Other comparisons with Agent Zero or Jules

- [Agent Zero vs Aider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-aider.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Amp](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-amp.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Antigravity CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-antigravity-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Auggie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-auggie.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Claude Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-claude-code.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Cline](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-cline.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-crush.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Cursor CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-cursor-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-deepseek-harness.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-devin.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Droid CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-droid-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Pi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-earendil-pi.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Gemini CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-gemini-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs GitHub Copilot CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-github-copilot-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs goose](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-goose.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Harness²](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-harness2.md)
- [Agent Zero vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Junie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-junie.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Kilo Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-kilo-code-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Kimi Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-kimi-code-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Kiro CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-kiro-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Mistral Vibe CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-mistral-vibe-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Muse Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-muse-code.md)
- [Agent Zero vs OpenAI Codex](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-openai-codex.md)
- [Agent Zero vs OpenCode](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-opencode.md)
- [Agent Zero vs OpenHands](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-openhands.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Prime Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-prime-agent.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Qoder CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-qoder-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Qwen Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-qwen-code.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Mirror CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-reflection-mirror.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Rovo Dev CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-rovo-dev-cli.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-warp.md)
- [Aider vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-jules.md)
- [Amp vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-jules.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-jules.md)
- [Auggie CLI vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/auggie-vs-jules.md)
- [Claude Code vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-jules.md)
- [Cline vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-jules.md)
- [Crush vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-jules.md)
- [Cursor CLI vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-jules.md)
- [DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-harness-vs-jules.md)
- [Devin vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-jules.md)
- [Droid CLI vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/droid-cli-vs-jules.md)
- [Pi vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/earendil-pi-vs-jules.md)
- [Gemini CLI vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-cli-vs-jules.md)
- [GitHub Copilot CLI vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/github-copilot-cli-vs-jules.md)
- [goose vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/goose-vs-jules.md)
- [Harness² vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harness2-vs-jules.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-jules.md)
- [Jules vs Junie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-junie.md)
- [Jules vs Kilo Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-kilo-code-cli.md)
- [Jules vs Kimi Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-kimi-code-cli.md)
- [Jules vs Kiro CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-kiro-cli.md)
- [Jules vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Jules vs Mistral Vibe CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-mistral-vibe-cli.md)
- [Jules vs Muse Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-muse-code.md)
- [Jules vs OpenAI Codex](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-openai-codex.md)
- [Jules vs OpenCode](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-opencode.md)
- [Jules vs OpenHands](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-openhands.md)
- [Jules vs Prime Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-prime-agent.md)
- [Jules vs Qoder CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-qoder-cli.md)
- [Jules vs Qwen Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-qwen-code.md)
- [Jules vs Mirror CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-reflection-mirror.md)
- [Jules vs Rovo Dev CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-rovo-dev-cli.md)
- [Jules vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-warp.md)
- [CLI Manager vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cli-manager-vs-jules.md)
- [Harness vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harness-autonomous-vs-jules.md)
- [Jules vs Paperclip](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-paperclip.md)
- [Jules vs Parallax](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-parallax-agents.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp