# Jules vs Junie CLI

> Junie CLI scores 53.2 (D) to Jules's 44.5 (E) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-18

Junie CLI scores 53.2 (D) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation and agent ergonomics. Both do agent harnesses.

- Jules: grade E, 44.5/100, rank #1000 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jules.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jules.json
- Junie CLI: grade D, 53.2/100, rank #804 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/junie.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/junie.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 713 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Jules (E)

Good for: A person or pipeline that wants to hand scoped GitHub tasks to a cloud agent and collect a pull request or a patch, or run a repoless job in a disposable VM.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 76 against 62
- Agent ergonomics, 64 against 55

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- No incidents deducted, where Junie CLI loses 3 points for them

Watch for: The REST API has been v1alpha since 3 October 2025 and the docs say specifications and API keys may change

### Junie CLI (D)

Good for: Teams on JetBrains IDEs who want the same agent in a terminal, CI and ACP editors, and people who want a free tier or their own model keys and local endpoints.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 45 against 13
- Payments & pricing, 42 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 72 against 18
- Transparency & trust, 78 against 44

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: One-shot, piped, ACP and Gateway runs trust the project by design and load its MCP servers, hooks, agents and skills without a prompt


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Jules | Junie CLI | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 13 | 45 | Junie CLI +32 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 62 | Jules +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 64 | 55 | Jules +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 56 | Jules +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 42 | Junie CLI +12 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 18 | 72 | Junie CLI +54 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 44 | 78 | Junie CLI +34 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **44.5 · E** | **53.2 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Jules | Junie CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Google LLC | JetBrains |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Google Terms of Service. The TypeScript SDK is Apache-2.0; the CLI binary is closed | Proprietary, JetBrains s.r.o., all rights reserved, under the JetBrains AI Terms of Service. The GitHub repository holds the README, release binaries and the issue tracker, not source |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-03-09 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-30 |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2026-06-12 |
| Customer content may train models | yes |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 1.3k npm/wk | 487 stars, 3.2k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | 2.8/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Jules.** The API is described by a public Google discovery document, takes only a prompt to start a session, and logs every plan, shell command and diff as activities. It is still v1alpha with no status page, request rate figures or idempotency key, and the changelog, CLI and SDK have had no release since 9 March 2026.

**Junie CLI.** Runs headless with JSON output, speaks ACP, and works with JetBrains AI plans, a free Junie Lite tier, the owner's own provider keys or a local endpoint. Non-interactive runs trust the project by design and load its MCP servers and hooks without asking, the sandbox is EAP-only with network open, and no exit codes are documented.

## Before you call either

### Jules

1. Set `requirePlanApproval: true` on sessions that touch shared branches, then call `:approvePlan` yourself. API sessions otherwise run their plan without review
2. Session creation has no request ID. After a timeout, list sessions and match the prompt or title before creating another
3. Poll activities with a `create_time` filter and cache them. Activities never change once written
4. Read the request fields from the discovery document at https://jules.googleapis.com/$discovery/rest?version=v1alpha. The field tables on jules.google render empty
5. Budget against the daily task quota of 15, 100 or 300 by plan. New sessions are refused until the rolling 24 hours reset

### Junie CLI

1. Run headless only in repositories you trust. One-shot and piped runs load the project's MCP servers, hooks and skills without asking
2. Set `JUNIE_API_KEY` (from junie.jetbrains.com/cli) or a provider key such as `JUNIE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` in CI. The default sign-in opens a browser
3. Add `--output-format json` or `--json-output-file` to parse results. Check the output, since exit codes aren't documented
4. Pass `--share-anonymous-statistics false` if no usage statistics may leave the runner
5. Pin a build with `--use-version` and `--skip-update-check`. The CLI updates itself on start by default

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Jules or Junie CLI?

Junie CLI scores 53.2 (D) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation and agent ergonomics.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Jules or Junie CLI

- [Agent Zero vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-jules.md)
- [Agent Zero vs Junie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-junie.md)
- [Aider vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-jules.md)
- [Aider vs Junie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-junie.md)
- [Amp vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-jules.md)
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- [Antigravity CLI vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-jules.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs Junie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-junie.md)
- [Auggie CLI vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/auggie-vs-jules.md)
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- [Claude Code vs Jules](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-jules.md)
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