# GAIA vs LearnHarness

> LearnHarness scores 59.3 (C) to GAIA's 49.7 (D) for assistants that remember you. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-30

LearnHarness scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against GAIA's 49.7 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. GAIA leads on reliability and maintenance & community. Both do assistants that remember you.

- GAIA: grade D, 49.7/100, rank #954 of 1239. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gaia.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gaia.json
- LearnHarness: grade C, 59.3/100, rank #648 of 1239. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/learnharness.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/learnharness.json
- Best AI personal assistants that act for one person: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/personal-assistants/index.md
- All 1196 assistants comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/personal-assistants/index.md

## Which one, for what

### GAIA (D)

Good for: It suits one person who wants mail triage, meeting briefs, todos and scheduled workflows from one assistant reachable on WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord or iMessage, and who wants to read the source.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 67 against 56
- Maintenance & community, 78 against 71

Watch for: The default approval mode in the source is `always_allow`, commented as nothing gated, while the privacy policy and the 26 August release notes say destructive actions wait for approval.

### LearnHarness (C)

Good for: A tutor for one learner that keeps a local record of sessions and a graph of propositions and reasoning chains.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 63 against 51
- Agent ergonomics, 60 against 54
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 20

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card
- Open source
- No incidents deducted, where GAIA loses 5 points for them

Watch for: The read, ls, find and grep tools resolve against the home directory with no allow list, and their output goes to the model provider


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | GAIA | LearnHarness | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 67 | 56 | GAIA +11 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 51 | 63 | LearnHarness +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 54 | 60 | LearnHarness +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 52 | GAIA +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 60 | LearnHarness +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 78 | 71 | GAIA +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 60 | GAIA +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **49.7 · D** | **59.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | GAIA | LearnHarness |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Platform | Agent harness |
| Vendor | The Experience Company | Amos Blomqvist |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | PolyForm-Noncommercial-1.0.0 | AGPL-3.0-only |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-14 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-14 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-08-07 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 308 stars | 4.2k stars |

## Verdicts

**GAIA.** GAIA's source is public, so its approval gate, memory store and token handling can be read. Three approval modes and per-tool overrides exist, but the default mode in the source runs every action unasked, which the privacy policy and release notes do not say. Pro costs $30 a month and self-hosting is limited to noncommercial use.

**LearnHarness.** The in-app agent reads files but cannot change them or run commands, and a bundled skill gives other agents a documented read-only view of sessions and the knowledge graph. The project is 14 days old at 0.4.0, its file reads reach the whole home directory without approval, and it has no security policy.

## Before you call either

### GAIA

1. Set Settings > Approvals to Always ask or Auto before connecting mail. The default in the source runs every action, including send and delete, without asking.
2. Expect no public API on the hosted service. The backend turns off its OpenAPI document in production, so reach GAIA through its apps, bots or CLI.
3. Check the plan before relying on the hosted service. The README and docs describe a Free plan, and the pricing page says GAIA is a paid product.
4. For self-hosting, prepare Docker, Node.js 20, a WorkOS account and a model key first, and confirm the use is noncommercial under the licence.
5. Add outside tools as MCP servers by URL on the Integrations page. GAIA asks before adding a server in every approval mode.

### LearnHarness

1. Use the bundled skill (`skills/learnharness/SKILL.md`) to read a learner's record. It needs Python 3.10 or later and writes nothing
2. Pass `--format json` before the subcommand, for example `python3 -B scripts/graph.py --format json propositions`
3. Treat stored answer keys and teacher prose as model-authored. A proposition in the graph is not evidence the learner understood it
4. Do not read `auth.json`, which sits one folder above the data folder and holds provider keys in plain text
5. Close the app or re-read when a stable snapshot matters. The readers do not lock files while the app writes

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, GAIA or LearnHarness?

LearnHarness scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against GAIA's 49.7 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. GAIA leads on reliability and maintenance & community.

### Are GAIA and LearnHarness open source?

No open-source release is listed for GAIA. LearnHarness is open source (AGPL-3.0-only).


## For agents

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

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