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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Amp vs Junie CLI

Amp scores 57.1 (C) on agent readiness against Junie CLI's 53.2 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Junie CLI leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

AmpAmp Frontier Corporation · Agent harness C57.1/100#691 of 1146 Junie CLIJetBrains · Agent harness D53.2/100#804 of 1146

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

  • Schema & documentation, 72 against 62
  • Agent ergonomics, 69 against 55
  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 72

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Junie CLI loses 3 points for them

Watch for

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

Junie CLI D

Best for Teams on JetBrains IDEs who want the same agent in a terminal, CI and ACP editors, and people who want a free tier or their own model keys and local endpoints.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 45 against 31
  • Payments & pricing, 42 against 35

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

One-shot, piped, ACP and Gateway runs trust the project by design and load its MCP servers, hooks, agents and skills without a prompt

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAmpJunie CLIEdge
Reliability16%203145Junie CLI +14
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27262Amp +10
Agent ergonomics13%16.26955Amp +14
Security & auth14%17.55756Amp +1
Payments & pricing10%12.53542Junie CLI +7
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87972Amp +7
Transparency & trust7%8.87778Junie CLI +1
Negative events≤150-3
TotalC 57.1/100D 53.2/100

Facts side by side

FactAmpJunie CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAmp Frontier CorporationJetBrains
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary, under the Amp licence terms (Amp Frontier Corporation). The npm packages are marked Amp Commercial License and the source repository is privateProprietary, JetBrains s.r.o., all rights reserved, under the JetBrains AI Terms of Service. The GitHub repository holds the README, release binaries and the issue tracker, not source
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-10-16
Terms last updatedno date given
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-102026-06-12
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/wk487 stars, 3.2k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (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.

Junie CLI

Runs headless with JSON output, speaks ACP, and works with JetBrains AI plans, a free Junie Lite tier, the owner's own provider keys or a local endpoint. Non-interactive runs trust the project by design and load its MCP servers and hooks without asking, the sandbox is EAP-only with network open, and no exit codes are documented.

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

Junie CLI

  1. Run headless only in repositories you trust. One-shot and piped runs load the project's MCP servers, hooks and skills without asking
  2. Set JUNIE_API_KEY (from junie.jetbrains.com/cli) or a provider key such as JUNIE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in CI. The default sign-in opens a browser
  3. Add --output-format json or --json-output-file to parse results. Check the output, since exit codes aren't documented
  4. Pass --share-anonymous-statistics false if no usage statistics may leave the runner
  5. Pin a build with --use-version and --skip-update-check. The CLI updates itself on start by default

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Amp or Junie CLI?

Amp scores 57.1 (C) on agent readiness against Junie CLI's 53.2 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Junie CLI leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

Other comparisons with Amp or Junie CLI

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