# Amp vs Emdash (slim)

> Amp scores 55.5 (C) to Emdash's 53.9 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-emdash.md (~5,800 tokens) · this version ~2,530 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-emdash.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-emdash
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Amp scores 55.5 (C) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

- Amp: C 55.5, rank #863 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amp.min.md
- Emdash: D 53.9, rank #927 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/emdash.min.md
- Amp, good for Teams that want a hosted, multi-model coding agent with shared threads and cloud machines, driven from scripts through execute mode or the SDKs. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 72 against 55; Agent ergonomics, 69 against 55; Security & auth, 57 against 38; Maintenance & community, 79 against 70; Transparency & trust, 77 against 54.
- Emdash, good for Developers who want parallel agents in worktrees, fed from their issue tracker, locally or over SSH. Ahead on Reliability, 55 against 23; Payments & pricing, 60 against 35. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | Amp | Emdash |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 23 | 55 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 72 | 55 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 69 | 55 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 38 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 35 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 79 | 70 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 77 | 54 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Amp | Emdash |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Amp Frontier Corporation | General Action, Inc. |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary, under the Amp licence terms (Amp Frontier Corporation). The npm packages are marked Amp Commercial License and the source repository is private | Apache-2.0 |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-22 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-10 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not read yet |
| Popularity | 41k npm/wk | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Emdash +32: Amp 23 (Local-package reading, as for the other closed-source harnesses. An install script that verifies a SHA-256 checksum, and an `@ampcode/cli` npm package of prebuilt binaries, for macOS, Linux and Windows through WSL, per the 8 October check (20). The source repository is private, so there is no public CI or test suite (0). There is no public issue tracker, and bug reports go to the vendor from inside the product. The 8 October reading of the status page's incident feed is struck, because ampcodestatus.com's robots.txt now disallows ClaudeBot, Claude-Web and anthropic-ai, so nothing is left to count crash or regression reports against (0). Versions are build stamps such as 0.0.1792627309-g98c009 with no per-version notes, and the introduction says "No backward compatibility", though removals are announced with dates in the Chronicle (3). The version line is 0.0 and we found no statement that the CLI is stable (0).); Emdash 55 (Local software. Homebrew cask and installers for macOS, Windows and Linux (20). A code-consistency check and release workflows; no test workflow found (10). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Stable tags to v1.2.11, release notes on GitHub (10). Version 1.2.11 (15). 20 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 15 = 55.)
- Payments & pricing, Emdash +25: Amp 35 (Harness reading of the published rubric. No payment protocol (0). The pricing page is public. Hobby is free, Megawatt is $20 a month with 45,000 orb minutes, orbs are priced per hour by size from $0.08, and paid credits are charged at provider API prices with no markup outside Enterprise. Gigawatt is $200 a month with $200 of agent usage and 1,000 hours of a1.xxlarge orbs, per the pricing docs (20). Hobby is free when you bring your own model key or subscription and run locally or on your own runner. The pricing page does not say whether sign-up asks for a card, and inference served by Amp is never free (15). A person signs in through a browser to create the access token (0).); Emdash 60 (Free self-hosted software with nothing to buy, so 0 for a protocol and 20 each for public pricing, a free tier and onboarding with no sign-up, 60.)
- Transparency & trust, Amp +23: Amp 77 (Closed source under the Amp licence terms from Amp Frontier Corporation, with the npm packages marked Amp Commercial License. The terms page shows no date (15). The security reference lists 19 providers and what each sees, says deleted threads are removed within 30 days, diagnostic data after 7 days and audit logs kept at least 30 days, and the privacy policy (modified 10 September 2026) agrees, with account data kept while the account is active (24). No deprecation policy. The terms allow any part of the Services to be discontinued without notice, while removals so far were announced with dates, such as the old npm package names on 14 May 2026 for removal on 15 June (8). Amp is local software tied to a hosted service. Providers and US hosting are disclosed in detail, but the usage data the client sends is not itemised and has no documented opt-out (12).); Emdash 54 (Apache 2.0 (30). A telemetry page on the docs site (not read) (18 of 30). No deprecation policy (5). Disclosed with an opt-out (15 of 20). 30 + 18 + 5 + 15 = 68.)
- Security & auth, Amp +19: Amp 57 (Harness reading of the framework checklist, as for the other harnesses. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. Every thread, with messages, code used as context and tool results, is stored on Amp's servers, and there is no local-only or self-hosted mode. Training on user data is off unless a user opts in, provider retention is limited under Minimal Data Retention, and secrets are redacted before they leave the client on a best-effort basis. The terms allow collection of usage data and we found no opt-out for the CLI (14). The tools page says Amp does not ask for approval before running tools, and points to a custom plugin for control. MCP servers defined in a project's settings need approval, `amp.mcpPermissions` allows or rejects servers and `amp.tools.disable` removes tools. The CLI has no sandbox. Orbs are separate cloud machines (6). The security reference has a prompt-injection section that describes layered measures, and the tools page warns about untrusted repositories and MCP servers (9). Threads keep prompts, tool calls and results as a record, a data API covers workspace analytics and threads, and authentication audit logs are for Enterprise workspaces (12). A security.txt that expires on 20 November 2026 (still valid on 4 November), a bug bounty with safe harbour, SOC 2 Type II and annual penetration tests per the vendor. On 22 October 2026 the security page posted an update that removes trust in compromised certificate authorities and names the CLI build to install. No CVEs found (16).); Emdash 38 (Harness reading. Telemetry is described as optional and disabled in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false, which reads as on by default (15 of 30). Worktree per task and remote machines over SSH (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). No security policy file found (3). 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 38.)
- Schema & documentation, Amp +17: Amp 72 (Framework reading. A JSON Schema for the settings file at ampcode.com/cli-settings.schema.json (22 properties), TypeScript types for every stream message, and a generated reference for the plugin API, but no OpenAPI for the server (18). ampcode.com/llms.txt indexes a raw Markdown rendition of each of 55 docs pages (10). The docs say when to use execute mode, orbs, runners, the oracle and the Librarian, and what each mode is for (15). Settings carry types and defaults, and the stream schema enumerates stop reasons, result subtypes and MCP server states (12). Examples on nearly every page and two result error subtypes (`error_during_execution`, `error_max_turns`), with no exit codes or error catalogue (9). Dated Chronicle posts with an RSS feed and a lastModified date on each docs page, but no changelog by CLI version (8).); Emdash 55 (Harness reading. Docs site and a workspace server package (55).)
- Agent ergonomics, Amp +14: Amp 69 (Harness reading of the framework line. `amp.tools.disable` removes built-in or MCP tools by name or glob, and MCP servers can be allowed or rejected by pattern or attached per run with `--mcp-config` (17). The stream schema has an `error_max_turns` result, but we found no documented flag for a turn or spend limit. Workspace entitlements set per-user quotas (9). `--stream-json` output follows Claude Code's format where it can, `--stream-json-input` takes several user messages on stdin, and the final message carries `is_error`, turns, duration and token usage (15). Threads continue by ID with `amp threads continue`, hand off to a new thread, and can move between the CLI, a runner and an orb (16). TypeScript and Python SDKs wrap the CLI, and a run needs an Amp account and an access token (12).); Emdash 55 (Harness reading. Issue intake from Linear, GitHub, Jira and others, diff review, pull requests and CI checks in one place, local or over SSH (55).)