# Jules vs Orca (slim)

> Orca scores 57.4 (C) to Jules's 45.1 (E) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-orca.md (~5,700 tokens) · this version ~2,380 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-orca.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jules-vs-orca
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Orca scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Jules's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Jules leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

- Jules: E 45.1, rank #1203 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jules.min.md
- Orca: C 57.4, rank #795 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orca.min.md
- Jules, good for Nobody starting new work, since Jules turns read-only after 11 November 2026 and ends on 31 December 2026. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 76 against 65; Security & auth, 57 against 43. Also Runs on your own machine.
- Orca, good for Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile. Ahead on Reliability, 58 against 13; Agent ergonomics, 70 against 64; Payments & pricing, 40 against 30; Maintenance & community, 75 against 18. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | Jules | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 13 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 76 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 64 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 18 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 51 | 54 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Jules | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Google LLC | Lovecast Inc. |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Google Terms of Service. The TypeScript SDK is Apache-2.0; the CLI binary is closed | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-03-09 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-30 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-01 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Orca +57: Jules 18 (Closed service. The newest API or product change is the changelog entry of 9 March 2026, 241 days before 5 November (0). The changelog's 29 October 2026 entry announces the wind-down and an export route through the CLI, which is a notice, not an API change. No package releases, commits or tags in the 90 days, and the jules-sdk repository's last commit is 18 March 2026 (0). A public changelog and a Discord channel. The 18 October issue and pull request counts came from shields.io badges and are struck (8 of 15, a partial held). The official TypeScript SDK and MCP packages last published 0.2.0 on 9 March 2026, per the 18 October registry reading, and no official MCP registry entry could be read (5). The SDK has a CI workflow on pull requests whose results couldn't be read, and two runtime dependencies. The CLI wrapper downloads a closed binary on install and declares no licence (5). 0 + 0 + 8 + 5 + 5 = 18.); Orca 75 (Tags to v1.4.251 and commits on 6 November 2026 (30). Many releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current builds (15). Extensive CI (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.)
- Reliability, Orca +45: Jules 13 (Hosted reading. No status page for Jules was found (0). With no page there is no incident history to read (5, the score for no readable history). The plans page, re-read on 5 November, publishes task quotas with numbers, 15, 100 and 300 tasks a rolling 24 hours and 3, 15 and 60 concurrent, and list `pageSize` is capped at 100, but no request rate figures were found (8 of 15). 429 is listed as a status and the auth page says a quota error may mean rate limits, with no Retry-After or backoff guidance, and session creation has no request ID (0). No SLA found (0). The API is v1alpha and labelled experimental, and the changelog of 29 October 2026 says Jules turns read-only after 11 November (0). 0 + 5 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 13.); Orca 58 (Local software. Desktop and mobile builds and a Homebrew cask (20). Unit, end-to-end and platform test workflows; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Tags to v1.4.251, no changelog file (8). Version 1.4 (15). 20 + 15 + 0 + 8 + 15 = 58.)
- Security & auth, Jules +14: Jules 57 (Hosted reading. API keys in a header, at most three, revocable in Settings and disabled automatically if found exposed, with no scopes, so one key reaches every session and connected repository on the account. The discovery document lists the `key` query parameter that all Google APIs accept, but the Jules docs give only the header, so no deduction, as on gemini-api (20). Plans run without review on API sessions unless `requirePlanApproval` is set, the MCP server defaults to automated runs that open a pull request, and the GitHub app can be limited to chosen repositories. No read-only key (10). Each VM has internet access and the FAQ puts the burden on the user. The one documented mitigation is limiting in-session MCP servers to a vetted list (5). Activities log every plan, message, bash command and patch per session. No account audit log of key use found (8). www.google.com security.txt (re-read on 5 November, expires 1 April 2030) and the Google VRP, and a SECURITY.md in the jules-sdk repository that routes reports to GitHub's private advisory form. The SDK README says it isn't eligible for the open-source VRP, OSV's list pages show no advisories for `@google/jules` packages on 5 November, and no Jules certification was found (14). 20 + 10 + 5 + 8 + 14 = 57.); Orca 43 (Harness reading. Anonymous usage data with an opt-out, per the README's link to its telemetry docs (15 of 30). Worktrees per agent and a sandboxed Linux build (12 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). A dependency-security workflow (6 of 20). 15 + 12 + 5 + 5 + 6 = 43.)
- Schema & documentation, Jules +11: Jules 76 (API reading. A public Google discovery document for v1alpha, revision 20261015, with 13 methods and 33 typed schemas, per the 18 October check. It sits on the API's own host and wasn't requested again (25). docs/llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every docs page (10). Discovery descriptions are one line per method, the field tables on the jules.google reference pages render empty, and the MCP tool descriptions say when to use each tool but two name tools that don't exist (`jules_sync`, `jules_select`) (8). Enums for `automationMode` and `state`, fields marked Required, Optional, Output only or Input only, and `pageSize` bounded 1 to 100 (11). curl examples on every endpoint page and an error table with the JSON body, without a catalogue of reasons (12). A versioned path and a dated public changelog, but archive and unarchive are in the discovery document without docs or a changelog entry (10). 25 + 10 + 8 + 11 + 12 + 10 = 76.); Orca 65 (Harness reading. A docs site with CLI orchestration and native chat pages (65).)
- Payments & pricing, Orca +10: Jules 30 (Published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Plans and their Jules limits are public without a login, and Jules sits inside the Google AI plans. The prices render per locale and weren't read, and there's no per-task price (10). A free plan of 15 tasks a day with a Google account, and no card step in the sign-up docs, until new tasks stop after 11 November 2026 (20). A person signs in, accepts the privacy notice, installs the GitHub app and creates the key in the web app (0). 0 + 10 + 20 + 0 = 30.); Orca 40 (Scored on the cloud option. No protocol (0). The cloud price wasn't found on the pages read (0). The desktop app is free and MIT with no card (20). The local app needs no sign-up that we found (20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 40.)
- Agent ergonomics, Orca +6: Jules 64 (API and MCP reading, per the 18 October check. Responses can be sized with `pageSize`, the standard `fields` parameter and a `create_time` filter that fetches only new activities. The MCP server has 8 tools, and `query_cache` takes a token budget (20). Token pagination on every list and filters on sessions, activities and sources (16). Google's error JSON with `status` and an ErrorInfo `reason`, plus a documented status table (14). No idempotency key on session creation and no readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations on the MCP tools, with `requirePlanApproval` as the only gate before work starts (4). Only `prompt` is required and a session without a source runs repoless. One official SDK, in TypeScript, plus the MCP server and CLI (10). 20 + 16 + 14 + 4 + 10 = 64.); Orca 70 (Harness reading. An orchestrator agent that splits work across workers in their own workspaces, chat or raw CLI, a browser and a CLI in one app (70).)