# goose vs OpenAI Codex

> goose has a score of 73.9 (BB) against OpenAI Codex's 73.4 (BB). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is reliability, 22 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

goose has a score of 73.9 (BB) against OpenAI Codex's 73.4 (BB). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is reliability, 22 points.

- goose: grade BB, 73.9/100, rank #52 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/goose.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/goose.json
- OpenAI Codex: grade BB, 73.4/100, rank #58 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openai-codex.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/openai-codex.json

## Which one, for what

Pick goose for reliability (+22).

Pick OpenAI Codex for schema & documentation (+9), security & auth (+5), transparency & trust (+20).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | goose | OpenAI Codex | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 77 | 55 | goose +22 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 90 | OpenAI Codex +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 80 | goose +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 77 | 82 | OpenAI Codex +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 86 | 87 | OpenAI Codex +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 83 | OpenAI Codex +20 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **73.9 · BB** | **73.4 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | goose | OpenAI Codex |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Agentic AI Foundation (originally Block) | OpenAI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (Codex CLI, its Rust crates and the TypeScript and Python SDKs). Codex cloud is a hosted service under OpenAI's terms |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-23 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 55k stars | 126k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**goose.** Telemetry off until the user opts in, with the collected fields listed. Autonomous mode, which approves every tool call, is the default.

**OpenAI Codex.** Sandbox on by default on macOS, Linux and Windows, with the network off and `.git` and `.codex` read-only. Pre-1.0 at 0.160.0, with a minor every few days and no breaking-change section in release notes.

## Before you call either

### goose

1. Set `GOOSE_MODE=smart_approve` or `approve` before a run. The default approves everything
2. Pass `--max-turns` with a real limit. The default is 1000
3. Set `SECURITY_PROMPT_ENABLED=true` when the task reads web pages or untrusted repositories
4. Use `--output-format json` and `--no-session` in CI, and check the exit code
5. Point remotes and links at aaif-goose/goose and goose-docs.ai. The block/goose paths redirect

### OpenAI Codex

1. Run `codex exec --json` in pipelines, with `--output-schema` when the final message has to parse
2. Keep the default sandbox. `--yolo` removes both the sandbox and approvals
3. Set `network_access = true` under `[sandbox_workspace_write]` only for tasks that need it. Network is off by default
4. Set `[analytics] enabled = false` and `[feedback] enabled = false` in config.toml to keep usage data local
5. Pin the npm version. A 0.x minor lands every few days

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