# Amp vs Sculptor (slim)

> Amp scores 55.5 (C) to Sculptor's 53.1 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-sculptor.md (~5,400 tokens) · this version ~1,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-sculptor.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-sculptor
- 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
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Amp scores 55.5 (C) on agent readiness against Sculptor's 53.1 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Sculptor leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

- Amp: C 55.5, rank #868 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amp.min.md
- Sculptor: D 53.1, rank #966 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sculptor.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 45; Agent ergonomics, 69 against 50; Transparency & trust, 77 against 57.
- Sculptor, good for Developers who want parallel coding agents in isolated workspaces and are fine with a research preview. Ahead on Reliability, 43 against 23; Payments & pricing, 60 against 35. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | Amp | Sculptor |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 23 | 43 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 72 | 45 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 69 | 50 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 35 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 79 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 77 | 57 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Amp | Sculptor |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Amp Frontier Corporation | Imbue, 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 | MIT |
| 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:
- Schema & documentation, Amp +27: 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).); Sculptor 45 (Harness reading. A README, specs and agent docs in the repository; no API reference (45).)
- Payments & pricing, Sculptor +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).); Sculptor 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.)
- Reliability, Sculptor +20: 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).); Sculptor 43 (Local software. Desktop downloads for Mac (Apple Silicon), Linux and Linux ARM64 (20). checks.yml and a PR gate run on the repository; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). sculptor-v tags up to v0.49.0, no changelog file (8). 0.x and labelled a research preview (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 8 + 0 = 43.)
- Transparency & trust, Amp +20: 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).); Sculptor 57 (MIT (30). Consent-based telemetry documented in the repository (18 of 30). The README warns of drastic changes during the research preview, with no deprecation policy (5). Opt-in telemetry (20). 30 + 18 + 5 + 20 = 73.)
- Agent ergonomics, Amp +19: 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).); Sculptor 50 (Harness reading. Workspaces as isolated copies, review and merge back, and built-in skills (50).)