# Crush vs Orca

> Orca scores 57.4 (C) to Crush's 49.8 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-orca
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crush-vs-orca.md (~5,300 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: 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)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Orca scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 49.8 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

- Crush: grade D, 49.8/100, rank #1082 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crush.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crush.json
- Orca: grade C, 57.4/100, rank #795 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orca.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orca.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 1500 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Crush (D)

Good 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 75
- Transparency & trust, 59 against 54

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

### Orca (C)

Good for: Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 58 against 52
- Agent ergonomics, 70 against 52

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
- No incidents deducted, where Crush loses 6 points for them

Watch for: Anonymous usage data collected by default, with an opt-out


## Why the edge

### Agent ergonomics: Orca +18

- Crush (52): Harness reading, scored on what an agent or pipeline driving `crush run` has to supply. About 20 built-in tools, any of which `permissions deny` hides, MCP servers take per-server `disabled_tools`, and skills can be turned off or kept out of the model's list. No lazy loading of MCP tools found (17). No turn, time or cost limit on `crush run`, and the only output controls are `--quiet` and `--verbose` (6). Errors come back as plain messages with a non-zero exit, such as the one for an unconfigured provider, with no documented codes and no JSON error record (8). `--session` and `--continue` resume a run, and `crush session list`, `show`, `last`, `rename` and `delete` take `--json` (13). One argument starts a run and environment keys are picked up, but there's no SDK, and the HTTP API needs `CRUSH_CLIENT_SERVER=1` and is described only in one README section (8).
- Orca (70): Harness reading. An orchestrator agent that splits work across workers in their own workspaces, chat or raw CLI, a browser and a CLI in one app (70).

### Payments & pricing: Crush +15

- Crush (55): No payment protocol (0). Scored on Charm's Hyper provider. Its public provider file at hyper.charm.land/v1/provider lists per-million-token figures for 22 models without a login, but no pricing page confirms them as billed rates, and plan prices sit in a script-rendered app (15). The CLI is free to use and runs with your own provider key or a local model, so nothing needs a card (20). A local model through Ollama, llama.cpp or LM Studio, or an existing provider key in the environment, works with no Charm account, so an agent can install it and run a task without a person signing up (20).
- Orca (40): Scored on the cloud option. No protocol (0). The cloud price wasn't found on the pages read (0). The desktop app is free and MIT with no card (20). The local app needs no sign-up that we found (20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 40.

### Maintenance & community: Crush +7

- Crush (82): v0.99.0 tagged on 29 October 2026 (6 days, 30). 21 release tags from 7 August to 29 October, v0.88.1 to v0.99.0, besides a moving `nightly` tag that isn't counted (20). The 18 October shields.io counts are struck. The repository's refs show 147 merges into main and 438 commits in the 90 days to 4 November, with 272 open pull requests carrying a merge ref, and new contributors signing the CLA most days. Reply times couldn't be read (12). No SDK, as with other harnesses. npm, Homebrew, Winget, Scoop, apt, yum and NUR builds come from the release workflow (12, held partial). Dependabot, a `go mod tidy` check in CI and nightly security scans, with CI results unread (8). 30 + 20 + 12 + 12 + 8 = 82.
- Orca (75): Tags to v1.4.251 and commits on 6 November 2026 (30). Many releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current builds (15). Extensive CI (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.

### Reliability: Orca +6

- Crush (52): Local-package reading. `@charmland/crush` on npm, a Homebrew tap, Winget, Scoop, AUR, Nix, FreeBSD pkg, Charm's apt and yum repositories and release binaries, with supported platforms named in the README (20). The public build workflow runs `go test -race -failfast ./...` on Linux, macOS and Windows for every push to main and every pull request, but GitHub pages and the API answer 403 to us, so results are unread (15). The 18 October issue and pull request counts came from shields.io badges, a third-party copy of GitHub data, and are struck. The repository's own refs show 2,574 pull requests to #4224, 272 of them open with a merge ref, and 147 merges into main in the 90 days to 4 November. Crash and regression issues couldn't be read (10). Release notes are generated from commit messages, with no CHANGELOG file and no breaking-change headings found. The legacy JSON config is deprecated in favour of `crushrc` while still loading (7, held partial). v0.99.0, before 1.0, with no stability statement (0). 20 + 15 + 10 + 7 + 0 = 52.
- Orca (58): Local software. Desktop and mobile builds and a Homebrew cask (20). Unit, end-to-end and platform test workflows; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Tags to v1.4.251, no changelog file (8). Version 1.4 (15). 20 + 15 + 0 + 8 + 15 = 58.

### Transparency & trust: Crush +5

- Crush (59): FSL-1.1-MIT, source-available, barring competing commercial use and converting each release to MIT on its second anniversary. Code from before 30 May 2025 is MIT. Not an OSI licence today (20). No privacy policy or terms for Crush were found on charm.land, and Hyper's legal pages render by script and weren't read. The README says Hyper is zero-data-retention, while Hyper's own app says some plans aren't and that usage on them may train Hyper's models, so the statements don't agree (8). The JSON config is marked deprecated with no removal date, and no deprecation policy was found (6). The README discloses usage metrics, links the source, says prompts aren't collected and gives two opt-outs, but doesn't mention the alias to the Hyper account (15).
- Orca (54): MIT (30). Privacy and telemetry docs on the site (not read) (18 of 30). No deprecation policy (5). Disclosed with an opt-out (15 of 20). 30 + 18 + 5 + 15 = 68.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Crush | Orca | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 52 | 58 | Orca +6 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 65 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 70 | Orca +18 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 41 | 43 | Orca +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 55 | 40 | Crush +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 75 | Crush +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 54 | Crush +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -6 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **49.8 · D** | **57.4 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Crush | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Charm | Lovecast Inc. |
| 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 | 2026-10-29 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Popularity | 29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.3/5 (4) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Crush

- -6.9 on 4 November 2026 (C to D): security, correction
- +0.2 on 27 October 2026: new evidence

### Orca

No score change since it was listed.

## 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, usage metrics are on by default, and a fix that scopes session approvals to one command is on main but in no release.

**Orca.** An open-source orchestrator for coding agents with worker agents in their own worktrees, chat and terminal views, a browser and a CLI, on desktop and mobile, with heavy test automation. It collects anonymous usage data by default, and the cloud option's pricing wasn't found.

## 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, and a session approval in v0.99.0 covers later commands in the same directory
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

### Orca

1. See the telemetry docs on onorca.dev to opt out of anonymous usage data
2. Use the orchestration CLI to hand a large task to one agent that starts workers

## Questions

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

Orca scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 49.8 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

### Are Crush and Orca open source?

No open-source release is listed for Crush. Orca is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Crush or Orca

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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