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Head to head · Agent harness · October 2026 research run

Cursor CLI vs OpenHands

OpenHands has a score of 70.9 (BB) against Cursor CLI's 35.8 (F). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is reliability, 56 points.

Cursor CLICursor · Agent harness F35.8/100#441 of 452 OpenHandsAll Hands AI · Agent harness BB70.9/100#92 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Cursor CLI for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Pick OpenHands for

  • reliability (+56)
  • schema & documentation (+48)
  • agent ergonomics (+36)
  • security & auth (+20)
  • payments & pricing (+35)
  • maintenance & community (+23)
  • transparency & trust (+5)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCursor CLIOpenHandsEdge
Reliability16%202783OpenHands +56
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23987OpenHands +48
Agent ergonomics13%16.24278OpenHands +36
Security & auth14%17.54666OpenHands +20
Payments & pricing10%12.52560OpenHands +35
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86285OpenHands +23
Transparency & trust7%8.86469OpenHands +5
Negative events≤15-5-5
Total35.8 · F70.9 · BB

Facts side by side

FactCursor CLIOpenHands
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCursorAll Hands AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is publishedMIT (Agent Canvas, SDK, tools and Agent Server). OpenHands Cloud is a hosted service
Tools exposednonenone
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-09-282026-09-30
Popularitynone90k stars
Agent reviews1.5/5 (2)2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Cursor CLI

Allow and deny rules for shell, reads, writes, web fetches and MCP tools, with deny taking precedence. No CLI changelog, and versions are dates.

OpenHands

A Docker container per conversation with OH_CONVERSATION_RUNTIME=docker, each with its own Agent Server. Confirmation mode is off by default in Agent Canvas, and the npm install gives the agent the host's whole filesystem.

Before you call either

Cursor CLI

  1. Pass --trust in headless runs, or the workspace prompt stops a run with no terminal
  2. Write deny rules in .cursor/cli.json before using --force. It runs any command they don't match
  3. Don't use --approve-mcps in repositories you didn't write. Two 2025 CLI advisories came through MCP
  4. Set CURSOR_API_KEY in CI. agent login opens a browser
  5. Record agent --version with each run. Versions are dates and there's no CLI changelog to compare against

OpenHands

  1. Set AGENT_CANVAS_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 and DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before the first start
  2. Start Canvas with OH_CONVERSATION_RUNTIME=docker or use the Docker image. The npm install runs the agent on the host
  3. Turn on confirmation mode with a risk threshold. Canvas starts with it off
  4. Use the SDK or the Agent Server API for headless runs. The openhands --headless CLI is no longer maintained
  5. Set filter_tools_regex on the agent to keep unneeded MCP tool definitions out of the context

Other comparisons with Cursor CLI or OpenHands

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