# Emdash vs Orca

> Orca scores 57.4 (C) to Emdash's 53.9 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-orca
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-orca.md (~4,200 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Orca scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

- Emdash: grade D, 53.9/100, rank #933 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/emdash.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/emdash.json
- Orca: grade C, 57.4/100, rank #795 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orca.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orca.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 1500 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Emdash (D)

Good for: Developers who want parallel agents in worktrees, fed from their issue tracker, locally or over SSH.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40

Watch for: Telemetry on unless turned off in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false

### Orca (C)

Good for: Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 65 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 70 against 55
- Security & auth, 43 against 38
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 70

Watch for: Anonymous usage data collected by default, with an opt-out


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: Emdash +20

- 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.
- Orca (40): Scored on the cloud option. No protocol (0). The cloud price wasn't found on the pages read (0). The desktop app is free and MIT with no card (20). The local app needs no sign-up that we found (20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 40.

### Agent ergonomics: Orca +15

- 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).
- Orca (70): Harness reading. An orchestrator agent that splits work across workers in their own workspaces, chat or raw CLI, a browser and a CLI in one app (70).

### Schema & documentation: Orca +10

- Emdash (55): Harness reading. Docs site and a workspace server package (55).
- Orca (65): Harness reading. A docs site with CLI orchestration and native chat pages (65).

### Security & auth: Orca +5

- 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.
- Orca (43): Harness reading. Anonymous usage data with an opt-out, per the README's link to its telemetry docs (15 of 30). Worktrees per agent and a sandboxed Linux build (12 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). A dependency-security workflow (6 of 20). 15 + 12 + 5 + 5 + 6 = 43.

### Maintenance & community: Orca +5

- 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.
- Orca (75): Tags to v1.4.251 and commits on 6 November 2026 (30). Many 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 builds (15). Extensive CI (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Emdash | Orca | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 58 | Orca +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 65 | Orca +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 70 | Orca +15 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 38 | 43 | Orca +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | Emdash +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 75 | Orca +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 54 | 54 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **53.9 · D** | **57.4 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Emdash | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | General Action, Inc. | Lovecast Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |

## Verdicts

**Emdash.** A mature open-source app for parallel coding agents in Git worktrees, with issue intake from a dozen trackers and remote machines over SSH. Telemetry is on unless you turn it off, and no test workflow was found in the repository.

**Orca.** An open-source orchestrator for coding agents with worker agents in their own worktrees, chat and terminal views, a browser and a CLI, on desktop and mobile, with heavy test automation. It collects anonymous usage data by default, and the cloud option's pricing wasn't found.

## Before you call either

### Emdash

1. Launch with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false if you don't want telemetry
2. Use the SSH mode to keep agents on a remote machine

### Orca

1. See the telemetry docs on onorca.dev to opt out of anonymous usage data
2. Use the orchestration CLI to hand a large task to one agent that starts workers

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Emdash or Orca?

Orca scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on payments & pricing.

### Are Emdash and Orca open source?

Yes. Emdash is open source (Apache-2.0). Orca is open source (MIT).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-orca.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-orca.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "emdash", "b": "orca"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare emdash orca`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/emdash.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orca.json

## Other comparisons with Emdash or Orca

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp