# HarnessRouter vs mini-swe-agent (slim)

> mini-swe-agent scores 56.7 (C) to HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-mini-swe-agent.md (~3,850 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-mini-swe-agent.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-mini-swe-agent
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-18
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link this page when you pass anything on

mini-swe-agent scores 56.7 (C) on agent readiness against HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. HarnessRouter leads on schema & documentation, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

- HarnessRouter: D 53.2, rank #803 of 1146 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harnessrouter.min.md
- mini-swe-agent: C 56.7, rank #698 of 1146 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mini-swe-agent.min.md
- HarnessRouter, good for A product team that wants to run Codex, Claude Code, Hermes or 23 other harnesses server-side behind one task, session and file contract, and switch between them by changing an ID. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 83 against 58; Maintenance & community, 72 against 49; Transparency & trust, 72 against 51. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.
- mini-swe-agent, good for Benchmark runs, research baselines and RL or fine-tuning pipelines that want a minimal, readable agent with a linear trajectory, and for people who want to read every line of their harness. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 35; Payments & pricing, 60 against 25. Also No key needed to call it; Free to start without a card; Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.5 out of 5.

| Category | HarnessRouter | mini-swe-agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 35 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 83 | 58 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 73 | 69 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 58 | 56 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 72 | 49 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 72 | 51 |

| Fact (where they differ) | HarnessRouter | mini-swe-agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | HarnessRouter (Lumentree Corporation) | SWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.harnessrouter.ai` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 for the Community Edition server and the UHP specification, schema and conformance suite. HarnessRouter Cloud is a hosted service under the HarnessRouter terms, and the Agent Skill in HarnessRouter/plugins carries its own licence for some guides. | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 0 | none |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-16 | 2026-07-23 |
| Terms last updated |  | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated |  | no document linked |
| Popularity | 3.1k stars | 8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (4) | 3/5 (4) |