Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Crush vs Jules
Crush scores 56.5 (C) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
Crush C
Best 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 13
- Payments & pricing, 55 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 18
- Transparency & trust, 56 against 44
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
crush run approves every permission request automatically, which the README doesn't mention
Jules E
Best for A person or pipeline that wants to hand scoped GitHub tasks to a cloud agent and collect a pull request or a patch, or run a repoless job in a disposable VM.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 76 against 65
- Agent ergonomics, 64 against 52
- Security & auth, 57 against 44
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 2.3 out of 5
Watch for
The REST API has been v1alpha since 3 October 2025 and the docs say specifications and API keys may change
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Crush | Jules | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 54 | 13 | Crush +41 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 65 | 76 | Jules +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 52 | 64 | Jules +12 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 44 | 57 | Jules +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 55 | 30 | Crush +25 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 82 | 18 | Crush +64 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 56 | 44 | Crush +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 56.5/100 | E 44.5/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Crush | Jules |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Charm | Google LLC |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available) | Proprietary service under the Google Terms of Service. The TypeScript SDK is Apache-2.0; the CLI binary is closed |
| Tools exposed | none | 8 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-09 | 2026-03-09 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-07-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | |
| Popularity | 29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk | 1.3k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.3/5 (4) | 2.8/5 (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.
Jules
The API is described by a public Google discovery document, takes only a prompt to start a session, and logs every plan, shell command and diff as activities. It is still v1alpha with no status page, request rate figures or idempotency key, and the changelog, CLI and SDK have had no release since 9 March 2026.
Before you call either
Crush
- Add
permissions denyrules or a PreToolUse hook beforecrush run. It approves every permission request in its session - Read
.crushrc,crushrcandcrush.jsonin a cloned repository before running Crush there. They execute as shell code at startup - Set
CRUSH_DISABLE_METRICS=1orDO_NOT_TRACK=1to stop usage metrics to data.charm.land - Wrap
crush runin your own timeout. It has no turn, time or cost limit flag - Configure a provider by environment variable or
crushrcfirst. With none,crush runexits with an error asking for interactive setup
Jules
- Set
requirePlanApproval: trueon sessions that touch shared branches, then call:approvePlanyourself. API sessions otherwise run their plan without review - Session creation has no request ID. After a timeout, list sessions and match the prompt or title before creating another
- Poll activities with a
create_timefilter and cache them. Activities never change once written - Read the request fields from the discovery document at https://jules.googleapis.com/$discovery/rest?version=v1alpha. The field tables on jules.google render empty
- Budget against the daily task quota of 15, 100 or 300 by plan. New sessions are refused until the rolling 24 hours reset
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Crush or Jules?
Crush scores 56.5 (C) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth.
Other comparisons with Crush or Jules
- Agent Zero vs Crush
- Agent Zero vs Jules
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- Aider vs Jules
- Amp vs Crush
- Amp vs Jules
- Antigravity CLI vs Crush
- Antigravity CLI vs Jules
- Auggie CLI vs Crush
- Auggie CLI vs Jules
- Claude Code vs Crush
- Claude Code vs Jules
- Cline vs Crush
- Cline vs Jules
- Crush vs Cursor CLI
- Crush vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Crush vs Devin
- Crush vs Droid CLI
- Crush vs Pi
- Crush vs Gemini CLI
- Crush vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Crush vs goose
- Crush vs Harness²
- Crush vs HarnessRouter
- Crush vs Junie CLI
- Crush vs Kilo Code CLI
- Crush vs Kimi Code CLI
- Crush vs Kiro CLI
- Crush vs mini-swe-agent
- Crush vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- Crush vs Muse Code
- Crush vs OpenAI Codex
- Crush vs OpenCode
- Crush vs OpenHands
- Crush vs Prime Agent
- Crush vs Qoder CLI
- Crush vs Qwen Code
- Crush vs Mirror CLI
- Crush vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Crush vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Cursor CLI vs Jules
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Jules
- Devin vs Jules
- Droid CLI vs Jules
- Pi vs Jules
- Gemini CLI vs Jules
- GitHub Copilot CLI vs Jules
- goose vs Jules
- Harness² vs Jules
- HarnessRouter vs Jules
- Jules vs Junie CLI
- Jules vs Kilo Code CLI
- Jules vs Kimi Code CLI
- Jules vs Kiro CLI
- Jules vs mini-swe-agent
- Jules vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- Jules vs Muse Code
- Jules vs OpenAI Codex
- Jules vs OpenCode
- Jules vs OpenHands
- Jules vs Prime Agent
- Jules vs Qoder CLI
- Jules vs Qwen Code
- Jules vs Mirror CLI
- Jules vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Jules vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- CLI Manager vs Crush
- CLI Manager vs Jules
- Crush vs Harness
- Crush vs Paperclip
- Crush vs Parallax
- Harness vs Jules
- Jules vs Paperclip
- Jules vs Parallax
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/crush-vs-jules.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/crush.json·/api/v1/tools/jules.json - From a terminal
anchor compare crush jules(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "crush", "b": "jules"}at/mcp, no key