# Crush vs mini-swe-agent

> mini-swe-agent and Crush score within a point of each other for agent harnesses, 56.7 and 56.5 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-18

mini-swe-agent and Crush score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 56.7 (C) and 56.5 (C). Crush leads on schema & documentation, maintenance & community 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
- mini-swe-agent: grade C, 56.7/100, rank #698 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mini-swe-agent.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mini-swe-agent.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:
- Schema & documentation, 65 against 58
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 49
- Transparency & trust, 56 against 51

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where mini-swe-agent loses 4 points for them

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

### mini-swe-agent (C)

Good for: Benchmark runs, research baselines and RL or fine-tuning pipelines that want a minimal, readable agent with a linear trajectory, and for people who want to read every line of their harness.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 70 against 54
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 52
- Security & auth, 56 against 44
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 55

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for: The default local environment runs commands on the host with no isolation and the full host environment


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Crush | mini-swe-agent | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 54 | 70 | mini-swe-agent +16 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 58 | Crush +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 69 | mini-swe-agent +17 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 44 | 56 | mini-swe-agent +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 55 | 60 | mini-swe-agent +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 49 | Crush +33 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 51 | Crush +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **56.5 · C** | **56.7 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Crush | mini-swe-agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Charm | SWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| 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 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-09 | 2026-07-23 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 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 | 8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk |
| 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.

**mini-swe-agent.** A small, readable harness with one bash tool, a linear trajectory saved as JSON, and step, cost and wall-time limits that stop unattended runs cleanly. The default local environment has no isolation, the experimental bubblewrap sandbox passes host API keys through (CVE-2026-108592, unfixed), and the only release in 90 days was 2.4.6 on 23 July 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

### mini-swe-agent

1. Run with `-y --exit-immediately` for unattended use. Without `--exit-immediately` it waits for input when the agent finishes
2. Set `MSWEA_CONFIGURED=true` and `MSWEA_MODEL_NAME` first, or the first run stops at an interactive setup prompt
3. Read `info.exit_status` in the `-o` trajectory file. A run that hits its limits still exits normally
4. For untrusted repositories use `-c mini.yaml -c environment.environment_class=docker -c environment.image=<image>`. The local and bubblewrap environments both expose host variables
5. Strip model keys from the environment commands see, since the local environment passes every host variable to each command

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Crush or mini-swe-agent?

mini-swe-agent and Crush score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 56.7 (C) and 56.5 (C). Crush leads on schema & documentation, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

### Are Crush and mini-swe-agent open source?

No open-source release is listed for Crush. mini-swe-agent is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Crush or mini-swe-agent

- [Agent Zero vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-crush.md)
- [Agent Zero vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Aider vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-crush.md)
- [Aider vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Amp vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-crush.md)
- [Amp vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-crush.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Auggie CLI vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/auggie-vs-crush.md)
- [Auggie CLI vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/auggie-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Claude Code vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-crush.md)
- [Claude Code vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
- [Cline vs Crush](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-crush.md)
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- [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)
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- [Crush vs Kiro CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-kiro-cli.md)
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- [Crush vs Muse Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-muse-code.md)
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- [Crush vs Mirror CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-reflection-mirror.md)
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