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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Crush vs Qoder CLI

Qoder CLI scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (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 713 harnesses comparisons

CrushCharm · Agent harness C56.5/100#705 of 1146 Qoder CLIQoder (BRIGHT ZENITH PRIVATE LIMITED) · Agent harness C59.3/100#609 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 35
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 72

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Qoder CLI loses 3 points for them

Watch for

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

Qoder CLI C

Best for Developers already on Qoder who want the same agent in a terminal, in CI through a PAT, in Zed through ACP, or embedded through the Agent SDK.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 65
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 52
  • Security & auth, 55 against 44
  • Transparency & trust, 64 against 56

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

No local sandbox is documented, and auto mode approves read-only tools on any path

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCrushQoder CLIEdge
Reliability16%205451Crush +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26581Qoder CLI +16
Agent ergonomics13%16.25280Qoder CLI +28
Security & auth14%17.54455Qoder CLI +11
Payments & pricing10%12.55535Crush +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88272Crush +10
Transparency & trust7%8.85664Qoder CLI +8
Negative events≤150-3
TotalC 56.5/100C 59.3/100

Facts side by side

FactCrushQoder CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCharmQoder (BRIGHT ZENITH PRIVATE LIMITED)
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, under the Qoder Terms of Service (BRIGHT ZENITH PRIVATE LIMITED, last updated 29 April 2026). No source is published, and the Agent SDK's LICENSE file points to the same terms
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-092026-10-16
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno 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
Popularity29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk5k npm/wk
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)3.5/5 (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.

Qoder CLI

A closed-source terminal agent with a documented headless mode, an ACP server, typed TypeScript and Python SDKs and near-daily releases. Permission rules and modes are detailed, but no local sandbox is documented, usage statistics are on by default, and security fixes appear only as one-line release notes with no advisories or disclosure policy.

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

Qoder CLI

  1. Set QODER_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN in CI. The browser sign-in can't complete in a headless run
  2. Pass --permission-mode with --allowed-tools in headless runs. Every ask is denied, and --yolo removes all checks
  3. Set --max-turns on unattended runs, and branch on exit codes 41 (authentication) and 53 (turn limit)
  4. Set privacy.usageStatisticsEnabled and aiCodeStatistics.enabled to false in ~/.qoder/settings.json if usage data must stay local
  5. Don't pass --model lite. The Lite tier was removed on 18 September 2026 and headless requests naming it fail

Questions

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

Qoder CLI scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Other comparisons with Crush or Qoder CLI

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