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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

HarnessRouter vs OpenMausBot

OpenMausBot scores 65.4 (B) on agent readiness against HarnessRouter's 53.3 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. HarnessRouter leads on transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 875 harnesses comparisons

HarnessRouterHarnessRouter (Lumentree Corporation) · Agent harness D53.3/100#849 of 1238 OpenMausBotSupamaus Software Private Limited · Agent harness B65.4/100#368 of 1238

Which one, for what

HarnessRouter D

Best 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

  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 59

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

No status page found (status.harnessrouter.ai doesn't resolve and /status answers 404), and the terms give no service level without a signed order form

OpenMausBot B

Best for A person or an outside agent who wants several CLI agents (Claude Code, Codex, Grok, ACP CLIs) organised as named bots with their own computers, routines and approvals, driven by MCP or a CLI.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 35
  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 83
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 25

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

New bots start at Full access, which approves provider permission requests without a card

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHarnessRouterOpenMausBotEdge
Reliability16%203560OpenMausBot +25
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28390OpenMausBot +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.27377OpenMausBot +4
Security & auth14%17.55859OpenMausBot +1
Payments & pricing10%12.52550OpenMausBot +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87274OpenMausBot +2
Transparency & trust7%8.87359HarnessRouter +14
Negative events≤15-5-2
TotalD 53.3/100B 65.4/100

Facts side by side

FactHarnessRouterOpenMausBot
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorHarnessRouter (Lumentree Corporation)Supamaus Software Private Limited
Hosted endpointhttps://api.harnessrouter.aino (local only)
TransportsHTTPstdio
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per useFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-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.Apache-2.0
Tools exposed020
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-162026-10-30
Terms last updatedno date given2026-10-10
Privacy policy last updated2026-07-302026-10-18
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-outnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity3.1k stars8.2k stars, 3.5k npm/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)none

Verdicts

HarnessRouter

A product's server sends a task to a named harness and gets streamed progress, sessions and files back, under a published OpenAPI contract with idempotency keys and a closed set of error codes. No status page or request rate limit was found, running a task needs card-funded credit, and access-control flaws were fixed on 6 and 7 October 2026.

OpenMausBot

A bounded 20-tool MCP server with typed schemas, annotations and idempotent sends, and a headless CLI with JSON output and exit codes, let another agent hand work to a bot team and wait on it. New bots start at Full access, so provider permission requests pass without a card, and usage analytics stay on until switched off.

Before you call either

HarnessRouter

  1. Name the harness yourself. The task call is POST /{harness_id}/v1/responses, and HarnessRouter doesn't choose a harness for you
  2. Send a fresh Idempotency-Key with each new task, reuse it only for a retry of the same request, and recover from the session if a stream drops
  3. Call cancel to stop work. Closing the SSE connection leaves the agent running and billing
  4. Keep the Workspace API key on the server. The docs forbid calling the API from a browser with it
  5. Check each tool's enforcement in GET /v1/bases. On bases marked instruction, disabled_tools is a request to the model, not a block

OpenMausBot

  1. Ask the owner for a pairing code from Settings > Phone, exchange it at POST /api/auth/pair, and set OPENMAUSBOT_TOKEN with an explicit OMB_PORT
  2. Pass a send_id with every send_bot_message and send_channel_message, so a retry returns the first receipt
  3. Use wait_for_conversation instead of polling, and on needs-user stop and tell the owner a card is waiting
  4. Check a bot's access level with the owner before sending work. New bots run at Full access unless defaults were changed
  5. Ask the owner to switch off Settings > General > Usage analytics if nothing beyond model calls should leave the machine

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, HarnessRouter or OpenMausBot?

OpenMausBot scores 65.4 (B) on agent readiness against HarnessRouter's 53.3 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. HarnessRouter leads on transparency & trust.

Are HarnessRouter and OpenMausBot open source?

Yes. HarnessRouter is open source (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.). OpenMausBot is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with HarnessRouter or OpenMausBot

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