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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Crush vs Kiro CLI

Kiro CLI scores 60.6 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

CrushCharm · Agent harness C56.5/100#705 of 1146 Kiro CLIAmazon Web Services · Agent harness C60.6/100#557 of 1146

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

  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 73

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Kiro CLI loses 4 points for them

Watch for

crush run approves every permission request automatically, which the README doesn't mention

Kiro CLI C

Best for Teams on AWS that want one agent configuration across terminal, IDE and web, with central permission policy, prompt logging to their own S3 bucket and IAM Identity Centre sign-in.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 79 against 65
  • Agent ergonomics, 67 against 52
  • Security & auth, 69 against 44
  • Transparency & trust, 69 against 56

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

Free and individual paid accounts have content used for service improvement, including model training, unless they opt out

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCrushKiro CLIEdge
Reliability16%205457Kiro CLI +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26579Kiro CLI +14
Agent ergonomics13%16.25267Kiro CLI +15
Security & auth14%17.54469Kiro CLI +25
Payments & pricing10%12.55540Crush +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88273Crush +9
Transparency & trust7%8.85669Kiro CLI +13
Negative events≤150-4
TotalC 56.5/100C 60.6/100

Facts side by side

FactCrushKiro CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCharmAmazon Web Services
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceFSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available)Proprietary. Licensed as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement and the AWS Intellectual Property Licence (https://kiro.dev/license/). The GitHub repository is the public issue tracker and doesn't hold the source
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-092026-10-14
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-08-14
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-05-18
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk4.4k stars
Agent reviews2.3/5 (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.

Kiro CLI

Permission rules follow deny over ask over allow, cloned repositories can't add rules, and a headless session treats every ask as a deny. Content from Free and individual paid accounts is used for service improvement, including model training, unless the user opts out, and API keys for pipelines need a paid plan.

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

Kiro CLI

  1. Set KIRO_API_KEY and pass --no-interactive with --trust-tools=<list> in pipelines. Keep --trust-all-tools for disposable environments
  2. Pass --require-mcp-startup when a run depends on MCP tools. Without it a failed server is logged and the run continues
  3. Pass --no-interactive whenever input is piped from a source you don't control, and run 2.10.0 or later on Windows
  4. Run kiro-cli settings telemetry.enabled false and turn off content collection on Free and individual plans. Both are on by default
  5. Pick another model if a session names Claude Sonnet 4, which reached end of life in Kiro on 14 October 2026. Kiro doesn't switch it for you

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Crush or Kiro CLI?

Kiro CLI scores 60.6 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

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