# Cursor CLI vs Kiro CLI (slim)

> Kiro CLI scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent harness. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-kiro-cli.md (~2,300 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-kiro-cli.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-kiro-cli
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-08

Kiro CLI scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent harness.

- Cursor CLI: F 35.3, rank #617 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-cli.min.md
- Kiro CLI: C 59.9, rank #370 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kiro-cli.min.md
- Cursor CLI, good for Teams already on Cursor who want the same agent and rules in a terminal or CI and a hand-off to Cloud Agents.
- Kiro CLI, good 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 Reliability, 57 against 27; Schema & documentation, 79 against 39; Agent ergonomics, 67 against 42; Security & auth, 66 against 46; Payments & pricing, 40 against 25; Maintenance & community, 73 against 62; Transparency & trust, 67 against 59.

| Category | Cursor CLI | Kiro CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 27 | 57 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 39 | 79 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 42 | 67 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 66 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 62 | 73 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 59 | 67 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cursor CLI | Kiro CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cursor | Amazon Web Services |
| Licence | Proprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is published | 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 documented | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | 2026-08-14 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | 2026-05-18 |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 4.4k stars |
| Agent reviews | 1.5/5 (2) | none |