# Crush vs Harness

> Harness scores 60.3 (C) to Crush's 56.5 (C) for multi-agent orchestration. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-18

Harness scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

- Crush: grade C, 56.5/100, rank #705 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crush.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crush.json
- Harness: grade C, 60.3/100, rank #573 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness-autonomous.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/harness-autonomous.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 713 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Crush (C)

Good for: Developers who want a Go terminal agent with a wide provider list, local models and Claude Code-compatible hooks.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 54 against 35
- Payments & pricing, 55 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 60

Watch for: `crush run` approves every permission request automatically, which the README doesn't mention

### Harness (C)

Good for: A developer who runs Claude Code and Codex on several machines and wants their agents to hand work to each other where the person can watch.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 65
- Agent ergonomics, 82 against 52
- Security & auth, 57 against 44
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 56

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for: Starting harnesses needs the person signed in with Google or Apple in a browser and an experimental account switch, off by default


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Crush | Harness | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 54 | 35 | Crush +19 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 85 | Harness +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 82 | Harness +30 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 44 | 57 | Harness +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 55 | 40 | Crush +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 60 | Crush +22 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 68 | Harness +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **56.5 · C** | **60.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Crush | Harness |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Charm | Autonomous, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  | stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available) | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 7 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-17 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked |  |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk | 1.3k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2.3/5 (4) | 3/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Crush.** Works with almost any provider or a local model and needs no Charm account. `crush run` approves every tool call automatically, there is no sandbox, a project's `.crushrc` runs as shell code, and usage metrics are on by default, so an unattended run needs deny rules and the metrics opt-out first.

**Harness.** An agent can start Claude Code or Codex sessions the person can watch, on this or another of their machines, through documented CLI commands and seven annotated MCP tools with exit codes. Starting agents needs the person's signed-in account and an experimental switch that is off by default, the CLI is pre-1.0, and usage counts are shared by default.

## Before you call either

### Crush

1. Add `permissions deny` rules or a PreToolUse hook before `crush run`. It approves every permission request in its session
2. Read `.crushrc`, `crushrc` and `crush.json` in a cloned repository before running Crush there. They execute as shell code at startup
3. Set `CRUSH_DISABLE_METRICS=1` or `DO_NOT_TRACK=1` to stop usage metrics to data.charm.land
4. Wrap `crush run` in your own timeout. It has no turn, time or cost limit flag
5. Configure a provider by environment variable or `crushrc` first. With none, `crush run` exits with an error asking for interactive setup

### Harness

1. Run `harness whoami` first. If it says you may not start harnesses, tell the person and do the work yourself
2. Ask the person before installing Harness, and leave `harness login` and the agents-start-agents switch to them
3. Treat exit 5 as final and do not retry. Treat exit 3 as needs the person, and never answer a harness's question or permission prompt
4. Name every harness, put the whole task in `harness new`, then wait, read with `harness show` and close only the ones you started
5. Run each `harness` command on its own or joined with `&&`, since piped commands no longer match the permission rule

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Crush or Harness?

Harness scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Are Crush and Harness open source?

No open-source release is listed for Crush. Harness is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Crush or Harness

- [Agent Zero vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-crush.md)
- [Aider vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-crush.md)
- [Amp vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-crush.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-crush.md)
- [Auggie CLI vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/auggie-vs-crush.md)
- [Claude Code vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-crush.md)
- [Cline vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-crush.md)
- [Crush vs Cursor CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-cursor-cli.md)
- [Crush vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-deepseek-harness.md)
- [Crush vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-devin.md)
- [Crush vs Droid CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-droid-cli.md)
- [Crush vs Pi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-earendil-pi.md)
- [Crush vs Gemini CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-gemini-cli.md)
- [Crush vs GitHub Copilot CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-github-copilot-cli.md)
- [Crush vs goose](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-goose.md)
- [Crush vs Harness²](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-harness2.md)
- [Crush vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Crush vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-jules.md)
- [Crush vs Junie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-junie.md)
- [Crush vs Kilo Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-kilo-code-cli.md)
- [Crush vs Kimi Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-kimi-code-cli.md)
- [Crush vs Kiro CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-kiro-cli.md)
- [Crush vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Crush vs Mistral Vibe CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-mistral-vibe-cli.md)
- [Crush vs Muse Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-muse-code.md)
- [Crush vs OpenAI Codex](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-openai-codex.md)
- [Crush vs OpenCode](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-opencode.md)
- [Crush vs OpenHands](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-openhands.md)
- [Crush vs Prime Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-prime-agent.md)
- [Crush vs Qoder CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-qoder-cli.md)
- [Crush vs Qwen Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-qwen-code.md)
- [Crush vs Mirror CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-reflection-mirror.md)
- [Crush vs Rovo Dev CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-rovo-dev-cli.md)
- [Crush vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-warp.md)
- [Amp vs Harness](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-harness-autonomous.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs Harness](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-harness-autonomous.md)
- [Auggie CLI vs Harness](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/auggie-vs-harness-autonomous.md)
- [Claude Code vs Harness](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-harness-autonomous.md)
- [CLI Manager vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cli-manager-vs-crush.md)
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- [Harness vs Mirror CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harness-autonomous-vs-reflection-mirror.md)
- [Harness vs Rovo Dev CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harness-autonomous-vs-rovo-dev-cli.md)
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