# Crush vs HarnessRouter

> Crush scores 56.5 (C) to HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-harnessrouter
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-harnessrouter.md (~3,750 tokens)
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- 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
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- 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: 2026-10-18

Crush scores 56.5 (C) on agent readiness against HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. HarnessRouter leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

- 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
- HarnessRouter: grade D, 53.2/100, rank #803 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harnessrouter.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/harnessrouter.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 25
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 72

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card
- No incidents deducted, where HarnessRouter loses 5 points for them

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

### HarnessRouter (D)

Good for: A product team that wants to run Codex, Claude Code, Hermes or 23 other harnesses server-side behind one task, session and file contract, and switch between them by changing an ID.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 83 against 65
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 52
- Security & auth, 58 against 44
- Transparency & trust, 72 against 56

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Open source

Watch for: No status page found (status.harnessrouter.ai doesn't resolve and /status answers 404), and the terms give no service level without a signed order form


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Crush | HarnessRouter | 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 | 83 | HarnessRouter +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 73 | HarnessRouter +21 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 44 | 58 | HarnessRouter +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 55 | 25 | Crush +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 72 | Crush +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 72 | HarnessRouter +16 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -5 | |
| **Total** | | **56.5 · C** | **53.2 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Crush | HarnessRouter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Charm | HarnessRouter (Lumentree Corporation) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.harnessrouter.ai` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available) | Apache-2.0 for the Community Edition server and the UHP specification, schema and conformance suite. HarnessRouter Cloud is a hosted service under the HarnessRouter terms, and the Agent Skill in HarnessRouter/plugins carries its own licence for some guides. |
| Tools exposed | none | 0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-16 |
| 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 | 3.1k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2.3/5 (4) | 2.5/5 (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.

**HarnessRouter.** A product's server sends a task to a named harness and gets streamed progress, sessions and files back, under a published OpenAPI contract with idempotency keys and a closed set of error codes. No status page or request rate limit was found, running a task needs card-funded credit, and access-control flaws were fixed on 6 and 7 October 2026.

## 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

### HarnessRouter

1. Name the harness yourself. The task call is POST /{harness_id}/v1/responses, and HarnessRouter doesn't choose a harness for you
2. Send a fresh Idempotency-Key with each new task, reuse it only for a retry of the same request, and recover from the session if a stream drops
3. Call cancel to stop work. Closing the SSE connection leaves the agent running and billing
4. Keep the Workspace API key on the server. The docs forbid calling the API from a browser with it
5. Check each tool's enforcement in GET /v1/bases. On bases marked instruction, disabled_tools is a request to the model, not a block

## Questions

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

Crush scores 56.5 (C) on agent readiness against HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. HarnessRouter leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust.

### Are Crush and HarnessRouter open source?

No open-source release is listed for Crush. HarnessRouter is open source (Apache-2.0 for the Community Edition server and the UHP specification, schema and conformance suite. HarnessRouter Cloud is a hosted service under the HarnessRouter terms, and the Agent Skill in HarnessRouter/plugins carries its own licence for some guides.).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Crush or HarnessRouter

- [Agent Zero vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-crush.md)
- [Agent Zero vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Aider vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-crush.md)
- [Aider vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Amp vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-crush.md)
- [Amp vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-crush.md)
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- [Auggie CLI vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/auggie-vs-crush.md)
- [Auggie CLI vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/auggie-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Claude Code vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-crush.md)
- [Claude Code vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-harnessrouter.md)
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- [Crush vs goose](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-goose.md)
- [Crush vs Harness²](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-harness2.md)
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- [Crush vs Kiro CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-kiro-cli.md)
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- [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)
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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp