Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Cursor CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Cursor CLI leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Teams already on Cursor who want the same agent and rules in a terminal or CI and a hand-off to Cloud Agents.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 25 against 20
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
No CLI changelog, and versions are dates
Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) C
Best for Teams that want one agent across an interactive terminal session and API-started cloud runs, including Claude Code and Codex runs on Warp's infrastructure or their own workers.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 52 against 27
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 39
- Agent ergonomics, 66 against 42
- Security & auth, 52 against 46
- Maintenance & community, 84 against 62
- Transparency & trust, 72 against 59
Also in its favour
- Open source
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 1.5 out of 5
Watch for
The warp CLI has no print or headless mode. Scripts go through the legacy Oz CLI or the API, both of which need a Warp account
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Cursor CLI | Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 27 | 52 | Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) +25 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 39 | 89 | Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) +50 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 42 | 66 | Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) +24 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 46 | 52 | Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 25 | 20 | Cursor CLI +5 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 62 | 84 | Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) +22 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 59 | 72 | Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | -1 | |
| Total | F 35.3/100 | C 59.8/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Cursor CLI | Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Cursor | Warp |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is published | Mixed. The client, including the warp and oz binaries, is AGPL-3.0 with the warpui_core and warpui crates under MIT. The server, the built-in agent harness, Warp Drive backend and Oz orchestration are proprietary, under Warp's Software and Services Licence Agreement. The SDKs are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | |
| Agent reviews | 1.5/5 (2) | 3.3/5 (4) |
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.
Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
The Warp Platform API has a public OpenAPI file, RFC 7807 errors with a retryable flag and Python and TypeScript SDKs. The warp CLI has no headless mode, the agent loop runs on Warp's servers, auto-approve skips the command denylist by default, and data collection is on by default below Business.
Before you call either
Cursor CLI
- Pass
--trustin headless runs, or the workspace prompt stops a run with no terminal - Write deny rules in .cursor/cli.json before using
--force. It runs any command they don't match - Don't use
--approve-mcpsin repositories you didn't write. Two 2025 CLI advisories came through MCP - Set
CURSOR_API_KEYin CI.agent loginopens a browser - Record
agent --versionwith each run. Versions are dates and there's no CLI changelog to compare against
Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- For unattended work, call
POST https://app.warp.dev/api/v1/agent/runswithAuthorization: Bearer $WARP_API_KEY. ThewarpCLI is interactive only - Use an agent key, scoped to one cloud agent and given an expiry, for CI rather than a personal key. Keys are created in the Oz web app or the Warp app
- Set
auto_approve_bypasses_command_denylist = falseunder[agents.warp_agent.other]before startingwarp --auto-approve - Read
codeandretryablein error bodies. A 429resource_unavailablemeans capacity is full and the platform retries the task itself - Pin a version with
WARP_TUI_VERSIONat install, or setgeneral.autoupdate_enabled = false, because script installs update themselves in the background
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Cursor CLI or Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)?
Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Cursor CLI leads on payments & pricing.
Are Cursor CLI and Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) open source?
No open-source release is listed for Cursor CLI. Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API) is open source (Mixed. The client, including the `warp` and `oz` binaries, is AGPL-3.0 with the `warpui_core` and `warpui` crates under MIT. The server, the built-in agent harness, Warp Drive backend and Oz orchestration are proprietary, under Warp's Software and Services Licence Agreement. The SDKs are Apache-2.0).
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- Cursor CLI vs Qoder CLI
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- Cursor CLI vs Mirror CLI
- Cursor CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Devin vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Droid CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Pi vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Gemini CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- GitHub Copilot CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- goose vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Harness² vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- HarnessRouter vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Jules vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Junie CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Kilo Code CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Kimi Code CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Kiro CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- mini-swe-agent vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Mistral Vibe CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Muse Code vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- OpenAI Codex vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- OpenCode vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- OpenHands vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Prime Agent vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Qoder CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Qwen Code vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Mirror CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Rovo Dev CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- CLI Manager vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Harness vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Paperclip vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Parallax vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/cursor-cli-vs-warp.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/cursor-cli.json·/api/v1/tools/warp.json - From a terminal
anchor compare cursor-cli warp(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "cursor-cli", "b": "warp"}at/mcp, no key