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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Agent Zero vs OpenCode

OpenCode scores 67.7 (B) 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 OpenCodeAnomaly · Agent harness B67.7/100#247 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

OpenCode B

Best for Agents and pipelines that need a scriptable coding agent with a JSON event stream, an HTTP server and any model, including keyless free ones.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 68 against 57
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 64
  • Agent ergonomics, 79 against 62
  • Security & auth, 60 against 54
  • Maintenance & community, 81 against 75
  • Transparency & trust, 67 against 55

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Most permissions default to allow, and SECURITY.md says the permission system is not a sandbox

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAgent ZeroOpenCodeEdge
Reliability16%205768OpenCode +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26488OpenCode +24
Agent ergonomics13%16.26279OpenCode +17
Security & auth14%17.55460OpenCode +6
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87581OpenCode +6
Transparency & trust7%8.85567OpenCode +12
Negative events≤15-6-4
TotalC 54.2/100B 67.7/100

Facts side by side

FactAgent ZeroOpenCode
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAgent Zero, s.r.o.Anomaly
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-232026-09-30
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-08-15
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-03-06
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity19k stars211k stars
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (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.

OpenCode

Runs with no key or account on free OpenCode Zen models. Most permissions default to allow, and SECURITY.md says the permission system is not a sandbox.

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

OpenCode

  1. Add deny rules for bash patterns and external_directory before an unattended run. Most tools default to allow
  2. Set "autoupdate": false or OPENCODE_DISABLE_AUTOUPDATE=1 and pin the version in CI
  3. Configure a provider key. With none, prompts go to free Zen models that may train on them
  4. Set OPENCODE_SERVER_PASSWORD before opencode serve. Without it the server runs unauthenticated
  5. Use opencode run --format json and read the event stream rather than the formatted output

Questions

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

OpenCode scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against Agent Zero's 54.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are Agent Zero and OpenCode open source?

Yes. Agent Zero is open source (MIT). OpenCode is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Agent Zero or OpenCode

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