Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Droid CLI vs Prime Agent

Prime Agent scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Droid CLI's 59.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Droid CLI leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 167 harnesses comparisons

Droid CLIFactory · Agent harness C59.1/100#560 of 950 Prime AgentPrime Intellect · Agent harness C60.5/100#511 of 950

Which one, for what

Droid CLI C

Good 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

Schema & documentation, 79 against 42
Security & auth, 63 against 50

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

Prime Agent C

Good for Long-running research and coding work where one model drives subagents, schedules and goals from code, and where the owner can isolate the machine.

Ahead on

Reliability, 65 against 49
Payments & pricing, 60 against 10

Also in its favour

No key needed to call it
Free to start without a card
Open source

Watch for

No approval prompts and no sandbox. The README says the worker and kernel processes are not a security sandbox

Score by category

Category	Weight this run	Droid CLI	Prime Agent	Edge
Reliability	16%20	49	65	Prime Agent +16
Performance	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Schema & documentation	13%16.2	79	42	Droid CLI +37
Agent ergonomics	13%16.2	72	73	Prime Agent +1
Security & auth	14%17.5	63	50	Droid CLI +13
Payments & pricing	10%12.5	10	60	Prime Agent +50
Task success	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Maintenance & community	7%8.8	79	79	even
Transparency & trust	7%8.8	64	64	even
Negative events	≤15	0	0
Total		59.1 · C	60.5 · C

Facts side by side

Fact	Droid CLI	Prime Agent
Kind	Agent harness	Agent harness
Vendor	Factory	Prime Intellect
Hosted endpoint	no (local only)	no (local only)
Transports
Auth	OAuth or key	None
Pricing	Paid	Free
x402	no	no
Licence	Proprietary, 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-2.0	MIT
Read-only variant documented	yes	no
llms.txt	yes	no
Last release	2026-10-08	2026-10-07
Terms last updated	2026-07-14	no date given
Privacy policy last updated	2026-08-20	no date given
Customer content may train models	not found in the text	not found in the text
Terms restrict automated access	not found in the text	yes
Terms restrict benchmarking	yes	yes
Terms or service can change without notice	not found in the text	yes
Arbitration or class-action waiver	yes	yes
Popularity	49 stars, 7.8k npm/wk	22k stars

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.

Prime Agent

Budgets for turns, tokens and time bound an autonomous run, and sessions survive a closed terminal through a supervising daemon. Model-written Python and shell commands run with the user's rights, with no approval step and no sandbox, and the Rust build on the main branch ships only as nightly betas.

Before you call either

Droid CLI

Set FACTORY_API_KEY (starts fk-) from the API keys page in Factory settings for headless runs. Interactive use signs in through a browser
Start with droid exec and no flags for analysis. Add --auto low for edits and --auto medium for installs, tests and local commits
Use --output-format json and read is_error, num_turns and session_id. Treat a non-zero exit code as failure
Set sandbox.enabled to true before running on untrusted code. In droid exec a sandbox violation is denied without a prompt
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

Prime Agent

Run it in a disposable clone, container or VM. It executes model-written Python and shell commands with the user's rights and asks nothing first
Set PRIME_AGENT_TELEMETRY=0 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before the first run if usage metrics must not leave the machine
For unattended runs pass --autonomous-max-turns, --autonomous-max-tokens and --autonomous-timeout-ms. Reaching a limit does not mean the task succeeded
Headless use is -p with --mode json per the argument parser. A provider key must already be configured, because /login is interactive
The -t/--tools, -nt/--no-tools and -nbt/--no-builtin-tools flags were removed and now fail as unknown options

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Droid CLI or Prime Agent?

Prime Agent scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Droid CLI's 59.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Droid CLI leads on schema & documentation and security & auth.

Are Droid CLI and Prime Agent open source?

No open-source release is listed for Droid CLI. Prime Agent is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Droid CLI or Prime Agent

Machine-readable

This page as Markdown /compare/droid-cli-vs-prime-agent.md · slim .min.md · JSON .json (or send Accept: text/markdown)
Each listing in full /api/v1/tools/droid-cli.json · /api/v1/tools/prime-agent.json
From a terminal anchor compare droid-cli prime-agent (the CLI)
Over MCP compare_tools {"a": "droid-cli", "b": "prime-agent"} at /mcp, no key

Which one, for what

Score by category

Facts side by side

Verdicts

Droid CLI

Prime Agent

Before you call either

Droid CLI

Prime Agent

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Droid CLI or Prime Agent?

Are Droid CLI and Prime Agent open source?

Other comparisons with Droid CLI or Prime Agent

Machine-readable

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?