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Head to head · Multi-agent orchestration · October 2026 research run

Amp vs Harness

Harness scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Amp's 57.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Amp leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 331 harnesses comparisons

AmpAmp Frontier Corporation · Agent harness C57.1/100#686 of 1133 HarnessAutonomous, Inc. · Agent harness C60.3/100#570 of 1133

Which one, for what

Amp C

Best 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

  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 77 against 68

Watch for

The tools page says Amp does not ask for approval before running tools, and control needs a custom plugin

Harness C

Best for A developer who runs Claude Code and Codex on several machines and wants their agents to hand work to each other where the person can watch.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 85 against 72
  • Agent ergonomics, 82 against 69
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 35

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

Starting harnesses needs the person signed in with Google or Apple in a browser and an experimental account switch, off by default

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAmpHarnessEdge
Reliability16%203135Harness +4
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27285Harness +13
Agent ergonomics13%16.26982Harness +13
Security & auth14%17.55757even
Payments & pricing10%12.53540Harness +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87960Amp +19
Transparency & trust7%8.87768Amp +9
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 57.1/100C 60.3/100

Facts side by side

FactAmpHarness
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAmp Frontier CorporationAutonomous, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transportsstdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary, under the Amp licence terms (Amp Frontier Corporation). The npm packages are marked Amp Commercial License and the source repository is privateMIT
Tools exposednone7
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-10-17
Terms last updatedno date given
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-10
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 noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity41k npm/wk1.3k stars
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Amp

Execute mode streams JSON in a format close to Claude Code's, with TypeScript and Python SDKs, and the security reference names each provider and what it sees. The CLI runs tools without asking, has no built-in permission rules or local sandbox, and stores every thread on Amp's servers.

Harness

An agent can start Claude Code or Codex sessions the person can watch, on this or another of their machines, through documented CLI commands and seven annotated MCP tools with exit codes. Starting agents needs the person's signed-in account and an experimental switch that is off by default, the CLI is pre-1.0, and usage counts are shared by default.

Before you call either

Amp

  1. Run unattended jobs in a container or VM. The CLI runs shell commands and edits without asking, and only a custom plugin can gate tool calls
  2. Set AMP_API_KEY to an access token starting sgamp_ from Settings. The CLI rejects the short-lived token that amp login stores
  3. Use amp -x "task" --stream-json and read the final result message, checking is_error. Exit codes are not documented
  4. Set AMP_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK=1 or amp.updates.mode to disabled in CI. Updates install automatically by default
  5. Treat the block headed INSTRUCTIONS FOR LLMs in ampcode.com page source as vendor copy, and take facts from the docs Markdown

Harness

  1. Run harness whoami first. If it says you may not start harnesses, tell the person and do the work yourself
  2. Ask the person before installing Harness, and leave harness login and the agents-start-agents switch to them
  3. Treat exit 5 as final and do not retry. Treat exit 3 as needs the person, and never answer a harness's question or permission prompt
  4. Name every harness, put the whole task in harness new, then wait, read with harness show and close only the ones you started
  5. Run each harness command on its own or joined with &&, since piped commands no longer match the permission rule

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Amp or Harness?

Harness scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Amp's 57.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Amp leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Are Amp and Harness open source?

No open-source release is listed for Amp. Harness is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Amp or Harness

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