# Aider vs Jules

> Aider scores 46.9 (D) 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

Aider scores 46.9 (D) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.

- Aider: grade D, 46.9/100, rank #959 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/aider.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/aider.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

### Aider (D)

Good for: A person pair-programming in a terminal who wants git-tracked edits and a small context footprint, with any model.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 54 against 13
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 63 against 44

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

Watch for: No release since 0.86.2 on 12 February 2026 and no commit since 22 May 2026

### 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 56
- Maintenance & community, 18 against 13

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 1.0 out of 5
- No incidents deducted, where Aider loses 8 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 | Aider | Jules | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 54 | 13 | Aider +41 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 56 | 76 | Jules +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 64 | Aider +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 59 | 57 | Aider +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 30 | Aider +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 13 | 18 | Jules +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 44 | Aider +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -8 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **46.9 · D** | **44.5 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Aider | Jules |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Aider AI LLC | 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 | Apache-2.0 | 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 | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-02-12 | 2026-03-09 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-07-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 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 | 49k stars | 1.3k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 1/5 (2) | 2.8/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Aider.** Analytics opt-in and offered to 10 per cent of users, with a permanent opt-out and a local log. No release since 0.86.2 on 12 February 2026 and no commit since 22 May 2026.

**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

### Aider

1. Read `.aider.conf.yml` in any cloned repository before starting aider. Its `test-cmd` and `lint-cmd` run without asking
2. Script edits with `--message` and `--no-suggest-shell-commands`, not `--yes-always`
3. Use Python 3.12 or earlier for the PyPI release
4. Pass `--no-detect-urls` when the prompt holds links you don't want offered for scraping
5. Check `git log` after a run. Each edit is its own commit

### 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, Aider or Jules?

Aider scores 46.9 (D) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community.

### Are Aider and Jules open source?

Aider is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Jules.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Aider or Jules

- [Agent Zero vs Aider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-aider.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-jules.md)
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- [Aider vs Antigravity CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-antigravity-cli.md)
- [Aider vs Auggie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-auggie.md)
- [Aider vs Claude Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-claude-code.md)
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- [Aider vs Cursor CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-cursor-cli.md)
- [Aider vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-deepseek-harness.md)
- [Aider vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-devin.md)
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- [Aider vs Pi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-earendil-pi.md)
- [Aider vs Gemini CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-gemini-cli.md)
- [Aider vs GitHub Copilot CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-github-copilot-cli.md)
- [Aider vs goose](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-goose.md)
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- [Aider vs Kilo Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-kilo-code-cli.md)
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- [Aider vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-warp.md)
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