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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Agent Zero vs OpenMausBot

OpenMausBot scores 65.4 (B) on agent readiness against Agent Zero's 54.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Agent Zero leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 875 harnesses comparisons

Agent ZeroAgent Zero, s.r.o. · Agent harness C54.6/100#811 of 1238 OpenMausBotSupamaus Software Private Limited · Agent harness B65.4/100#368 of 1238

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.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 50

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

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

OpenMausBot B

Best for A person or an outside agent who wants several CLI agents (Claude Code, Codex, Grok, ACP CLIs) organised as named bots with their own computers, routines and approvals, driven by MCP or a CLI.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 64
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 62
  • Security & auth, 59 against 54

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

New bots start at Full access, which approves provider permission requests without a card

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAgent ZeroOpenMausBotEdge
Reliability16%205760OpenMausBot +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26490OpenMausBot +26
Agent ergonomics13%16.26277OpenMausBot +15
Security & auth14%17.55459OpenMausBot +5
Payments & pricing10%12.56050Agent Zero +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87574Agent Zero +1
Transparency & trust7%8.85959even
Negative events≤15-6-2
TotalC 54.6/100B 65.4/100

Facts side by side

FactAgent ZeroOpenMausBot
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAgent Zero, s.r.o.Supamaus Software Private Limited
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transportsstdio
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Tools exposednone20
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-232026-10-30
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-10-10
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-10-18
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity19k stars8.2k stars, 3.5k npm/wk

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.

OpenMausBot

A bounded 20-tool MCP server with typed schemas, annotations and idempotent sends, and a headless CLI with JSON output and exit codes, let another agent hand work to a bot team and wait on it. New bots start at Full access, so provider permission requests pass without a card, and usage analytics stay on until switched off.

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

OpenMausBot

  1. Ask the owner for a pairing code from Settings > Phone, exchange it at POST /api/auth/pair, and set OPENMAUSBOT_TOKEN with an explicit OMB_PORT
  2. Pass a send_id with every send_bot_message and send_channel_message, so a retry returns the first receipt
  3. Use wait_for_conversation instead of polling, and on needs-user stop and tell the owner a card is waiting
  4. Check a bot's access level with the owner before sending work. New bots run at Full access unless defaults were changed
  5. Ask the owner to switch off Settings > General > Usage analytics if nothing beyond model calls should leave the machine

Questions

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

OpenMausBot scores 65.4 (B) on agent readiness against Agent Zero's 54.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Agent Zero leads on payments & pricing.

Are Agent Zero and OpenMausBot open source?

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

Other comparisons with Agent Zero or OpenMausBot

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