# Pi vs Traycer (slim)

> Pi scores 62.6 (B) to Traycer's 57 (C) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/earendil-pi-vs-traycer.md (~6,100 tokens) · this version ~2,680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/earendil-pi-vs-traycer.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/earendil-pi-vs-traycer
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Pi scores 62.6 (B) on agent readiness against Traycer's 57 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent harnesses.

- Pi: B 62.6, rank #550 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/earendil-pi.min.md
- Traycer: C 57, rank #816 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/traycer.min.md
- Pi, good for Developers and pipelines that want a small, scriptable coding agent they can extend in TypeScript and drive over JSONL or RPC, inside their own container. Ahead on Reliability, 75 against 65; Schema & documentation, 84 against 65; Agent ergonomics, 76 against 65; Security & auth, 61 against 42; Payments & pricing, 60 against 30; Maintenance & community, 87 against 75; Transparency & trust, 67 against 60. Also Free to start without a card.
- Traycer, good for Teams who want several coding agents working together with shared context and boards. Also No incidents deducted, where Pi loses 10 points for them.

| Category | Pi | Traycer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 75 | 65 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 84 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 76 | 65 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 61 | 42 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 87 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 67 | 60 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Pi | Traycer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Earendil | Traycer AI |
| Last release | 2026-10-21 | 2026-11-06 |
| Popularity | 113k stars, 5.2M npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Pi +30: Pi 60 (No payment protocol in the repository or docs (0). Read with the self-hosted rule. Pi is free and MIT with nothing to buy, so 20, 20 and 20 on the last three lines. Model costs go to whichever provider the owner configures. Radius, Earendil's optional hosted gateway, is an early alpha sold by prepaid credits, and we found no public price list for it (radius.earendil.com/pricing returns 404 on 23 October 2026).); Traycer 30 (Scored on the paid option, Traycer's own inference subscription, whose price wasn't read (0 of 20). No protocol (0). Bring-your-own-agent use is free (20). Accounts for sync and teams weren't checked, half (10). 0 + 0 + 20 + 10 = 30.)
- Schema & documentation, Pi +19: Pi 84 (Harness reading, as for the other harnesses. JSON Schemas for settings, models, keybindings and themes ship in the package and, since 1.2.0 on 12 October 2026, at pi.dev/schemas/, and the JSON event stream and every RPC command are documented record by record, but as Markdown and TypeScript types with no machine-readable spec for the RPC protocol (18). pi.dev/llms.txt returns 404. Each docs page answers `Accept: text/markdown` with Markdown, and the docs ship inside the npm package (8). The integration page has a table saying when to use interactive, print, JSON, RPC or the SDK, and the MCP page gives a typical use for each exposure setting. 1.4.0 adds a Models Configuration reference generated from the `models.json` schema (17). Enumerated modes, thinking levels and exposure values, typed settings with defaults (13). A Python RPC client, a typed TypeScript client and about 75 example extensions, with command errors and parse errors shown as records (13). A dated changelog in the repository and at pi.dev/changelog with an RSS feed (15).); Traycer 65 (Harness reading. Mintlify docs, a protocol package and a CLI (65).)
- Security & auth, Pi +19: Pi 61 (Harness reading of the framework checklist, used for the harnesses in this category. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. An anonymous install and update ping to pi.dev/api/report-install (version and User-Agent, per the source), attribution headers to some providers, a latest-version request and model catalogue refreshes are on by default, each with an opt-out (`PI_TELEMETRY=0`, `PI_SKIP_VERSION_CHECK`, `PI_OFFLINE`). Since 1.4.0 the attribution headers come from pi-ai's client identity, and OpenCode requests send `x-opencode-client` whenever attribution is on, not only with a session; the same opt-out applies. Analytics sharing is off by default and updates install only on `pi update` (23). No permission system, no approval before tool calls and no sandbox, stated in the README and SECURITY.md. Project trust gates a repository's `.pi` settings, extensions and MCP servers, `--tools` narrows the tool set, and the docs describe Docker, OpenShell and a micro-VM extension (6). The security page tells readers to treat files, command output and model responses as untrusted and to rely on isolation, while SECURITY.md puts prompt injection out of scope and context files such as AGENTS.md load whatever the trust decision (7). Sessions are JSONL files on disk with HTML export, MCP server logs go to `~/.pi/agent/mcp.log`, and the JSON stream records each tool call (11). SECURITY.md gives security@earendil.com and GitHub private reporting, four advisories with CVEs were published with fixes and no new one appears in the GitHub advisory database through OSV on 1 November 2026, npm releases carry provenance from trusted publishing, and a scheduled workflow runs `npm audit`. Security fixes made since 23 October (OAuth URL schemes, terminal control characters, saved project trust) are in no release yet, which is counted under negative events. No security.txt and no bounty found (14).); Traycer 42 (Harness reading. Code is processed in memory and not used for training, but Privacy Mode is opt-in for individuals, prompts may be logged with it off, and Sentry and PostHog 'may be enabled in release builds' (10 of 30). No approval model described in the README (8 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log found (5). SECURITY.md, CodeQL, Scorecard and secret scanning (14 of 20). 10 + 8 + 5 + 5 + 14 = 42.)
- Maintenance & community, Pi +12: Pi 87 (v1.4.0 on 21 October 2026, still the latest on npm on 1 November (30). The changelog dates 23 releases in the 90 days from 3 August, 0.84.0 on 6 August to 1.4.0 on 21 October 2026 (20). Commits land daily and the changelog credits issues and outside pull requests in most releases. New contributors' issues are closed automatically, reviewed daily, and get no reply if they miss the quality bar, per CONTRIBUTING.md. Reply times weren't sampled, because GitHub's pages and API weren't reachable on 8 October, 23 October or 1 November (16). npm, the pi.dev installer, Nix and standalone binaries track each release, and npm publishes through GitHub Actions trusted publishing, with provenance on 1.4.0 (14). Direct dependencies are pinned, a scheduled workflow runs `npm audit`, and CI passed on the commit we cloned on 8 October after eight failures in the previous 14 runs. CI results weren't readable on 23 October or 1 November (7).); Traycer 75 (Commits on 6 November 2026 and host 1.5.3 (30). More than three releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current apps and CLI packages (15). CI with tests (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.)
- Agent ergonomics, Pi +11: Pi 76 (Harness reading of the framework line, scored on what an agent or pipeline driving it has to supply. Four default tools (read, bash, edit, write) and a short system prompt. MCP tools default to `codemode` exposure, which keeps them out of the model's tool declarations, and `tool_search` loads deferred ones on demand (23). Automatic compaction, agent-level retry with three attempts and exponential backoff, and truncated tool output saved to a file. We found no turn or step limit in the CLI or settings reference (13). `--mode json` streams JSONL events ending in `agent_settled` and `--mode rpc` returns `success: false` with an error string. Print mode exits nonzero on a failed response, JSON mode doesn't (16). Sessions are stored as trees and continue, fork or take a fixed ID with `--continue`, `--fork` and `--session-id`. File changes have no built-in undo, and a git checkpoint is an example extension (14). It needs a provider key or subscription login before the first run, and the SDK is TypeScript only, with RPC for other languages (10).); Traycer 65 (Harness reading. Model switching within an agent, agent-to-agent loops, a CLI and cross-device sync (65).)
- Reliability, Pi +10: Pi 75 (Read as a local package. `@earendil-works/pi-coding-agent` 1.4.0 on npm (still the latest on 1 November 2026) with Node.js 22.19 or newer stated, install scripts for macOS, Linux and Windows, Nix and standalone binaries (20). A public CI workflow builds, checks and tests on every push to main and runs an MCP client conformance job. The run on the commit we cloned (ce950d7, 8 October 2026) passed, but eight of the last 15 runs on main, all on 7 and 8 October, failed. Run results weren't readable on 23 October, so this stands per the 8 October check (15). The repository API reported 308 open issues and pull requests against 113,417 stars on 8 October, not re-read on 23 October. Issues from new contributors are closed automatically and reviewed daily by maintainers, per CONTRIBUTING.md, so the open count understates what is reported, and we couldn't sample reply times (16). A dated changelog with Breaking Changes sections and migration steps, but breaking changes ship outside major versions. The Azure provider rename shipped in patch release 1.0.3 on 5 October 2026, minor release 1.2.0 on 12 October carried four (theme schema location, `before_agent_start`, busy-session behaviour and `pi mcp list --json` output), and 1.3.0 required `/v1` on `kimi-coding` base URL overrides under Changed. The same reading as agent-zero and mistral-vibe-cli, and these breaks also take a deduction under negative events (9). 1.4.0 on 21 October 2026, with 1.0.0 dated 1 October 2026 (15).); Traycer 65 (Local software. Builds for macOS, Linux and Windows, and package-manager publishing workflows (20). test.yml, CodeQL, OpenSSF Scorecard and secret scanning run on the repository; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). CHANGELOG.md (15). Host 1.5.3 (15). 20 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 15 = 65.)