Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Amp vs Jules
Amp scores 57.1 (C) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons
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
- Reliability, 31 against 13
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 64
- Payments & pricing, 35 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 79 against 18
- Transparency & trust, 77 against 44
Watch for
The tools page says Amp does not ask for approval before running tools, and control needs a custom plugin
Jules E
Best 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.
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
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 this run | Amp | Jules | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 31 | 13 | Amp +18 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 72 | 76 | Jules +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 69 | 64 | Amp +5 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 57 | 57 | even |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 35 | 30 | Amp +5 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 79 | 18 | Amp +61 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 77 | 44 | Amp +33 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 57.1/100 | E 44.5/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Amp | Jules |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Amp Frontier Corporation | Google LLC |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary, under the Amp licence terms (Amp Frontier Corporation). The npm packages are marked Amp Commercial License and the source repository is private | 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 | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-03-09 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-07-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-10 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 41k npm/wk | 1.3k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (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.
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
Amp
- 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
- Set
AMP_API_KEYto an access token startingsgamp_from Settings. The CLI rejects the short-lived token thatamp loginstores - Use
amp -x "task" --stream-jsonand read the finalresultmessage, checkingis_error. Exit codes are not documented - Set
AMP_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK=1oramp.updates.modetodisabledin CI. Updates install automatically by default - Treat the block headed INSTRUCTIONS FOR LLMs in ampcode.com page source as vendor copy, and take facts from the docs Markdown
Jules
- Set
requirePlanApproval: trueon sessions that touch shared branches, then call:approvePlanyourself. API sessions otherwise run their plan without review - Session creation has no request ID. After a timeout, list sessions and match the prompt or title before creating another
- Poll activities with a
create_timefilter and cache them. Activities never change once written - 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
- 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, Amp or Jules?
Amp scores 57.1 (C) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.
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- Antigravity CLI vs Jules
- Auggie CLI vs Jules
- Claude Code vs Jules
- Cline vs Jules
- Crush vs Jules
- Cursor CLI vs Jules
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Jules
- Devin vs Jules
- Droid CLI vs Jules
- Pi vs Jules
- Gemini CLI vs Jules
- GitHub Copilot CLI vs Jules
- goose vs Jules
- Harness² vs Jules
- HarnessRouter vs Jules
- Jules vs Junie CLI
- Jules vs Kilo Code CLI
- Jules vs Kimi Code CLI
- Jules vs Kiro CLI
- Jules vs mini-swe-agent
- Jules vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- Jules vs Muse Code
- Jules vs OpenAI Codex
- Jules vs OpenCode
- Jules vs OpenHands
- Jules vs Prime Agent
- Jules vs Qoder CLI
- Jules vs Qwen Code
- Jules vs Mirror CLI
- Jules vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Jules vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Amp vs CLI Manager
- Amp vs Harness
- Amp vs Paperclip
- Amp vs Parallax
- CLI Manager vs Jules
- Harness vs Jules
- Jules vs Paperclip
- Jules vs Parallax
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/amp-vs-jules.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/amp.json·/api/v1/tools/jules.json - From a terminal
anchor compare amp jules(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "amp", "b": "jules"}at/mcp, no key