Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Crush vs OpenMausBot

OpenMausBot scores 65.4 (B) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 875 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

  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 50
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 74

Watch for

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

OpenMausBot B

Best for A person or an outside agent who wants several CLI agents (Claude Code, Codex, Grok, ACP CLIs) organised as named bots with their own computers, routines and approvals, driven by MCP or a CLI.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 54
  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 65
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 52
  • Security & auth, 59 against 44

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

New bots start at Full access, which approves provider permission requests without a card

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCrushOpenMausBotEdge
Reliability16%205460OpenMausBot +6
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26590OpenMausBot +25
Agent ergonomics13%16.25277OpenMausBot +25
Security & auth14%17.54459OpenMausBot +15
Payments & pricing10%12.55550Crush +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88274Crush +8
Transparency & trust7%8.85959even
Negative events≤150-2
TotalC 56.7/100B 65.4/100

Facts side by side

FactCrushOpenMausBot
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCharmSupamaus Software Private Limited
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transportsstdio
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)Apache-2.0
Tools exposednone20
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-092026-10-30
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-10-10
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-10-18
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 waivernot found in the text
Popularity29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk8.2k stars, 3.5k npm/wk
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)none

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.

OpenMausBot

A bounded 20-tool MCP server with typed schemas, annotations and idempotent sends, and a headless CLI with JSON output and exit codes, let another agent hand work to a bot team and wait on it. New bots start at Full access, so provider permission requests pass without a card, and usage analytics stay on until switched off.

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

OpenMausBot

  1. Ask the owner for a pairing code from Settings > Phone, exchange it at POST /api/auth/pair, and set OPENMAUSBOT_TOKEN with an explicit OMB_PORT
  2. Pass a send_id with every send_bot_message and send_channel_message, so a retry returns the first receipt
  3. Use wait_for_conversation instead of polling, and on needs-user stop and tell the owner a card is waiting
  4. Check a bot's access level with the owner before sending work. New bots run at Full access unless defaults were changed
  5. Ask the owner to switch off Settings > General > Usage analytics if nothing beyond model calls should leave the machine

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Crush or OpenMausBot?

OpenMausBot scores 65.4 (B) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Are Crush and OpenMausBot open source?

No open-source release is listed for Crush. OpenMausBot is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Crush or OpenMausBot

Machine-readable

For companies

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