# Big Arrow vs Restate

> Restate scores 73.3 (BB) to Big Arrow's 70.7 (BB) for hitl ask. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-restate
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-restate.md (~2,150 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-restate.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-restate.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-15

Restate scores 73.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Big Arrow's 70.7 (BB), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Big Arrow leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do hitl ask.

- Big Arrow: grade BB, 70.7/100, rank #151 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bigarrow.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bigarrow.json
- Restate: grade BB, 73.3/100, rank #94 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/restate.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/restate.json
- Best human approval and handoff for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/human-in-the-loop/index.md
- All 53 human approval comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/human-in-the-loop/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Big Arrow (BB)

Good for: An agent on a person's Mac that reaches a step only the person may do, such as a permission prompt, 2FA code or payment, and needs to show where.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 67 against 61
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Transparency & trust, 59 against 50

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: First commit 8 October 2026 and version 0.4.6, with flags removed or renamed between minor versions

### Restate (BB)

Good for: A team that already writes agent steps as durable handlers and wants a long, cheap wait for a human answer in TypeScript, Python, Java, Go or Rust, with the option to self-host.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 91 against 75
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 78
- Maintenance & community, 92 against 70

Watch for: No reviewer inbox, Slack app or email. The approval request and the reply endpoint are the builder's code


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Big Arrow | Restate | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 75 | 91 | Restate +16 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 85 | Restate +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 81 | Restate +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 61 | Big Arrow +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | Big Arrow +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 92 | Restate +22 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 50 | Big Arrow +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **70.7 · BB** | **73.3 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Big Arrow | Restate |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | Platform |
| Vendor | Franz Enzenhofer | Restate GmbH |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | BSL 1.1 converting to Apache-2.0 four years after release (server), MIT (SDKs) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-01 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 747 stars | 4.5k stars, 329k npm/wk, 76k PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**Big Arrow.** An agent can show a person which control to click, with a labelled arrow that needs no permission to draw, never takes focus and always removes itself. The tool is a week old at version 0.4.6, runs only on macOS, reports no answer beyond how an arrow ended, and has no security policy.

**Restate.** An awakeable pauses a handler at no compute cost and resumes it from one HTTP request, with a durable timeout, on a free plan of 100,000 actions a month. Restate sends nothing to the approver, so the Slack message, email or inbox is the builder's code, and the published terms and privacy statement predate the paid plans.

## Before you call either

### Big Arrow

1. Open the exact System Settings pane or URL first, then point at the one control left for the person
2. Write the sign as a full sentence that names the action and, for approvals or payments, what the click does
3. Pass `--app` or `--window` for any target inside an app, so it is raised and the arrow hides while covered
4. On exit 4, run `bigarrow doctor` and ask the person to grant Accessibility to the app running your shell, not to bigarrow
5. Call `bigarrow stop` once the step is done, and add `bigarrow stop --hook` as a Claude Code UserPromptSubmit hook

### Restate

1. Create the awakeable, send its ID inside `ctx.run`, then await the promise, so a retry doesn't send a second approval request
2. Resolve with `POST /restate/awakeables/<id>/resolve` and a JSON body, or `/reject` with a text reason, which throws a terminal error in the handler
3. On Restate Cloud send `Authorization: Bearer key_...` to `https://<env_id>.env.<region>.restate.cloud:8080`. On a self-hosted server put an authenticating proxy in front of port 8080
4. Wrap the wait in `orTimeout` and decide what a timeout means. Without it the handler waits with no limit
5. Retry ingress errors only on 408, 425, 429 or 5xx, and only when `x-restate-error-source` isn't `invocation`

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Big Arrow or Restate?

Restate scores 73.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Big Arrow's 70.7 (BB), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Big Arrow leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

### Are Big Arrow and Restate open source?

Big Arrow is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Restate.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-restate.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-restate.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "bigarrow", "b": "restate"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare bigarrow restate`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bigarrow.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/restate.json

## Other comparisons with Big Arrow or Restate

- [gotoHuman vs Restate](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gotohuman-vs-restate.md)
- [Hatchet vs Restate](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hatchet-vs-restate.md)
- [Inngest vs Restate](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inngest-vs-restate.md)
- [Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Restate](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-restate.md)
- [Permit MCP Gateway vs Restate](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/permit-mcp-gateway-vs-restate.md)
- [Pushary vs Restate](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pushary-vs-restate.md)
- [Restate vs Temporal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/restate-vs-temporal.md)
- [Restate vs Trigger.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/restate-vs-trigger-dev.md)
- [Restate vs withHuman](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/restate-vs-withhuman.md)
- [Big Arrow vs gotoHuman](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-gotohuman.md)
- [Big Arrow vs Hatchet](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-hatchet.md)
- [Big Arrow vs Inngest](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-inngest.md)
- [Big Arrow vs Pushary](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-pushary.md)
- [Big Arrow vs Temporal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-temporal.md)
- [Big Arrow vs Trigger.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-trigger-dev.md)
- [Big Arrow vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bigarrow-vs-orkes-conductor.md)