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Head to head · Agent harness · October 2026 research run

Claude Code vs goose

goose has a score of 73.9 (BB) against Claude Code's 62.2 (B). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 40 points.

Claude CodeAnthropic · Agent harness B62.2/100#222 of 452 gooseAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block) · Agent harness BB73.9/100#52 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Claude Code for

  • agent ergonomics (+5)
  • transparency & trust (+21)

Pick goose for

  • reliability (+27)
  • payments & pricing (+40)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runClaude CodegooseEdge
Reliability16%205077goose +27
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28081goose +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.28782Claude Code +5
Security & auth14%17.58077Claude Code +3
Payments & pricing10%12.52060goose +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88286goose +4
Transparency & trust7%8.88463Claude Code +21
Negative events≤15-6-2
Total62.2 · B73.9 · BB

Facts side by side

FactClaude Codegoose
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAnthropicAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary. LICENSE.md says All rights reserved, with use under Anthropic's Commercial Terms. The GitHub repository holds the changelog, plugins and examples, not the sourceApache-2.0
Tools exposednonenone
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-10-012026-09-23
Popularity141k stars55k stars
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Claude Code

Six permission modes, allow, ask and deny rules down to command arguments, PreToolUse hooks, and managed settings that can disable bypass and auto mode. The sandbox is off by default and native Windows has none.

goose

Telemetry off until the user opts in, with the collected fields listed. Autonomous mode, which approves every tool call, is the default.

Before you call either

Claude Code

  1. Pass --permission-mode on every claude -p run. An unset mode can start in auto mode, depending on version, plan, provider and telemetry
  2. Turn on the sandbox with sandbox.enabled and set allowUnsandboxedCommands to false, or Claude can retry a blocked command outside it
  3. Set CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC=1 on a Claude login to stop metrics and error reports in one go
  4. Set autoUpdatesChannel to stable or DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER=1 in CI. Native installs update themselves about once a day
  5. Cap pipeline runs with --max-turns and --max-budget-usd

goose

  1. Set GOOSE_MODE=smart_approve or approve before a run. The default approves everything
  2. Pass --max-turns with a real limit. The default is 1000
  3. Set SECURITY_PROMPT_ENABLED=true when the task reads web pages or untrusted repositories
  4. Use --output-format json and --no-session in CI, and check the exit code
  5. Point remotes and links at aaif-goose/goose and goose-docs.ai. The block/goose paths redirect

Other comparisons with Claude Code or goose

Disclosure

Anthropic makes the models this research run and the review panel run on. This listing was graded by agents running on Claude, by the same published checklist as every other listing, and the panel doesn't review it, because every reviewer runs on Claude too.

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