# Emdash vs Jules (slim)

> Emdash scores 53.9 (D) to Jules's 45.1 (E) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-jules.md (~5,800 tokens) · this version ~2,430 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-jules.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-jules
- 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
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Emdash scores 53.9 (D) on agent readiness against Jules's 45.1 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

- Emdash: D 53.9, rank #933 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/emdash.min.md
- Jules: E 45.1, rank #1203 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jules.min.md
- Emdash, good for Developers who want parallel agents in worktrees, fed from their issue tracker, locally or over SSH. Ahead on Reliability, 55 against 13; Payments & pricing, 60 against 30; Maintenance & community, 70 against 18. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.
- Jules, good for Nobody starting new work, since Jules turns read-only after 11 November 2026 and ends on 31 December 2026. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 76 against 55; Agent ergonomics, 64 against 55; Security & auth, 57 against 38. Also Runs on your own machine.

| Category | Emdash | Jules |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 55 | 13 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 55 | 76 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 64 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 38 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 70 | 18 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 54 | 51 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Emdash | Jules |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | General Action, Inc. | Google LLC |
| Transports |  | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under the Google Terms of Service. The TypeScript SDK is Apache-2.0; the CLI binary is closed |
| Tools exposed | none | 8 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-03-09 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-07-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Emdash +52: Emdash 70 (v1.2.11 on 6 November 2026 (30). v1.2.9, v1.2.10 and v1.2.11 within two weeks (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current installers and Homebrew cask (15). Release workflows, no test CI (5). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 70.); Jules 18 (Closed service. The newest API or product change is the changelog entry of 9 March 2026, 241 days before 5 November (0). The changelog's 29 October 2026 entry announces the wind-down and an export route through the CLI, which is a notice, not an API change. No package releases, commits or tags in the 90 days, and the jules-sdk repository's last commit is 18 March 2026 (0). A public changelog and a Discord channel. The 18 October issue and pull request counts came from shields.io badges and are struck (8 of 15, a partial held). The official TypeScript SDK and MCP packages last published 0.2.0 on 9 March 2026, per the 18 October registry reading, and no official MCP registry entry could be read (5). The SDK has a CI workflow on pull requests whose results couldn't be read, and two runtime dependencies. The CLI wrapper downloads a closed binary on install and declares no licence (5). 0 + 0 + 8 + 5 + 5 = 18.)
- Reliability, Emdash +42: Emdash 55 (Local software. Homebrew cask and installers for macOS, Windows and Linux (20). A code-consistency check and release workflows; no test workflow found (10). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Stable tags to v1.2.11, release notes on GitHub (10). Version 1.2.11 (15). 20 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 15 = 55.); Jules 13 (Hosted reading. No status page for Jules was found (0). With no page there is no incident history to read (5, the score for no readable history). The plans page, re-read on 5 November, publishes task quotas with numbers, 15, 100 and 300 tasks a rolling 24 hours and 3, 15 and 60 concurrent, and list `pageSize` is capped at 100, but no request rate figures were found (8 of 15). 429 is listed as a status and the auth page says a quota error may mean rate limits, with no Retry-After or backoff guidance, and session creation has no request ID (0). No SLA found (0). The API is v1alpha and labelled experimental, and the changelog of 29 October 2026 says Jules turns read-only after 11 November (0). 0 + 5 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 13.)
- Payments & pricing, Emdash +30: Emdash 60 (Free self-hosted software with nothing to buy, so 0 for a protocol and 20 each for public pricing, a free tier and onboarding with no sign-up, 60.); Jules 30 (Published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Plans and their Jules limits are public without a login, and Jules sits inside the Google AI plans. The prices render per locale and weren't read, and there's no per-task price (10). A free plan of 15 tasks a day with a Google account, and no card step in the sign-up docs, until new tasks stop after 11 November 2026 (20). A person signs in, accepts the privacy notice, installs the GitHub app and creates the key in the web app (0). 0 + 10 + 20 + 0 = 30.)
- Schema & documentation, Jules +21: Emdash 55 (Harness reading. Docs site and a workspace server package (55).); Jules 76 (API reading. A public Google discovery document for v1alpha, revision 20261015, with 13 methods and 33 typed schemas, per the 18 October check. It sits on the API's own host and wasn't requested again (25). docs/llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every docs page (10). Discovery descriptions are one line per method, the field tables on the jules.google reference pages render empty, and the MCP tool descriptions say when to use each tool but two name tools that don't exist (`jules_sync`, `jules_select`) (8). Enums for `automationMode` and `state`, fields marked Required, Optional, Output only or Input only, and `pageSize` bounded 1 to 100 (11). curl examples on every endpoint page and an error table with the JSON body, without a catalogue of reasons (12). A versioned path and a dated public changelog, but archive and unarchive are in the discovery document without docs or a changelog entry (10). 25 + 10 + 8 + 11 + 12 + 10 = 76.)
- Security & auth, Jules +19: Emdash 38 (Harness reading. Telemetry is described as optional and disabled in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false, which reads as on by default (15 of 30). Worktree per task and remote machines over SSH (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). No security policy file found (3). 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 38.); Jules 57 (Hosted reading. API keys in a header, at most three, revocable in Settings and disabled automatically if found exposed, with no scopes, so one key reaches every session and connected repository on the account. The discovery document lists the `key` query parameter that all Google APIs accept, but the Jules docs give only the header, so no deduction, as on gemini-api (20). Plans run without review on API sessions unless `requirePlanApproval` is set, the MCP server defaults to automated runs that open a pull request, and the GitHub app can be limited to chosen repositories. No read-only key (10). Each VM has internet access and the FAQ puts the burden on the user. The one documented mitigation is limiting in-session MCP servers to a vetted list (5). Activities log every plan, message, bash command and patch per session. No account audit log of key use found (8). www.google.com security.txt (re-read on 5 November, expires 1 April 2030) and the Google VRP, and a SECURITY.md in the jules-sdk repository that routes reports to GitHub's private advisory form. The SDK README says it isn't eligible for the open-source VRP, OSV's list pages show no advisories for `@google/jules` packages on 5 November, and no Jules certification was found (14). 20 + 10 + 5 + 8 + 14 = 57.)
- Agent ergonomics, Jules +9: Emdash 55 (Harness reading. Issue intake from Linear, GitHub, Jira and others, diff review, pull requests and CI checks in one place, local or over SSH (55).); Jules 64 (API and MCP reading, per the 18 October check. Responses can be sized with `pageSize`, the standard `fields` parameter and a `create_time` filter that fetches only new activities. The MCP server has 8 tools, and `query_cache` takes a token budget (20). Token pagination on every list and filters on sessions, activities and sources (16). Google's error JSON with `status` and an ErrorInfo `reason`, plus a documented status table (14). No idempotency key on session creation and no readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations on the MCP tools, with `requirePlanApproval` as the only gate before work starts (4). Only `prompt` is required and a session without a source runs repoless. One official SDK, in TypeScript, plus the MCP server and CLI (10). 20 + 16 + 14 + 4 + 10 = 64.)