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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Droid CLI vs Mistral Vibe CLI

Mistral Vibe CLI scores 62.9 (B) on agent readiness against Droid CLI's 59.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Droid CLI leads on security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

Droid CLIFactory · Agent harness C59.1/100#619 of 1146 Mistral Vibe CLIMistral AI · Agent harness B62.9/100#457 of 1146

Which one, for what

Droid CLI C

Best for Teams that want a terminal coding agent with tiered autonomy, command rules and an optional sandbox, and that will pay for a Factory plan.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 63 against 58

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Mistral Vibe CLI loses 8 points for them

Watch for

No free tier or trial was found. Plans start at $20 a month and included usage is stated only as rolling rate limits without numbers

Mistral Vibe CLI B

Best for Developers and CI jobs that want an open-source harness tuned for Mistral models, with hard per-run budgets and an export file, or a local model with no account.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 69 against 49
  • Agent ergonomics, 84 against 72
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Transparency & trust, 79 against 64

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

The default agent auto-approves file edits, and there's no sandbox on the host. Isolation needs the experimental --agent-socket server or a container

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDroid CLIMistral Vibe CLIEdge
Reliability16%204969Mistral Vibe CLI +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27976Droid CLI +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.27284Mistral Vibe CLI +12
Security & auth14%17.56358Droid CLI +5
Payments & pricing10%12.51060Mistral Vibe CLI +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87975Droid CLI +4
Transparency & trust7%8.86479Mistral Vibe CLI +15
Negative events≤150-8
TotalC 59.1/100B 62.9/100

Facts side by side

FactDroid CLIMistral Vibe CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorFactoryMistral AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary, under Factory's Terms and Conditions. The droid npm package is marked UNLICENSED and the public repository holds documentation only. The Python SDK is Apache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentedyesyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-10-09
Terms last updated2026-07-142026-09-25
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-202026-09-03
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity49 stars, 7.8k npm/wk5.1k stars, 332k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Droid CLI

droid exec is read-only unless --auto raises the autonomy level, with command rules, an optional kernel-enforced sandbox, JSON output and documented exit codes. No free tier, status page or security.txt was found, the source is closed, and usage metrics go to Factory by default.

Mistral Vibe CLI

Apache-2.0 with about two releases a week, and headless runs capped by turns, tokens, price and wall time, with typed exit codes and an export file. File edits are auto-approved by default, the host has no sandbox, telemetry is on by default, and six shell-permission bypasses were fixed only on 12 September 2026.

Before you call either

Droid CLI

  1. Set FACTORY_API_KEY (starts fk-) from the API keys page in Factory settings for headless runs. Interactive use signs in through a browser
  2. Start with droid exec and no flags for analysis. Add --auto low for edits and --auto medium for installs, tests and local commits
  3. Use --output-format json and read is_error, num_turns and session_id. Treat a non-zero exit code as failure
  4. Set sandbox.enabled to true before running on untrusted code. In droid exec a sandbox violation is denied without a prompt
  5. Pin the version in CI with npm install -g droid@<version>, or set FACTORY_DROID_AUTO_UPDATE_ENABLED=false on standalone installs, which update themselves

Mistral Vibe CLI

  1. Pass --agent on every -p run (plan is read-only). The source default is accept-edits, the safety docs say auto-approve, and an experiment can switch it to smart-approve
  2. Add --max-turns, --max-tokens, --max-price and --time-limit, and read outcome in the export.json that --output-dir writes. Exit 3 means a limit or a refusal
  3. Run in a container or behind --agent-socket before using --auto-approve. Vibe has no sandbox of its own on the host
  4. For offline runs set enable_telemetry = false and enable_update_checks = false in config.toml. The docs' enable_auto_update isn't the key the code reads
  5. Use 2.25.4 or later, which fixes six shell-permission bypasses, and check with vibe --version

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Droid CLI or Mistral Vibe CLI?

Mistral Vibe CLI scores 62.9 (B) on agent readiness against Droid CLI's 59.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Droid CLI leads on security & auth.

Are Droid CLI and Mistral Vibe CLI open source?

No open-source release is listed for Droid CLI. Mistral Vibe CLI is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Droid CLI or Mistral Vibe CLI

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