# Kiro CLI vs Orca

> Kiro CLI scores 59.8 (C) to Orca's 57.4 (C) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kiro-cli-vs-orca
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kiro-cli-vs-orca.md (~5,250 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Kiro CLI scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Orca's 57.4 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent harnesses.

- Kiro CLI: grade C, 59.8/100, rank #675 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kiro-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/kiro-cli.json
- Orca: grade C, 57.4/100, rank #791 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orca.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orca.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 1500 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Kiro CLI (C)

Good for: Teams on AWS that want one agent configuration across terminal, IDE and web, with central permission policy, prompt logging to their own S3 bucket and IAM Identity Centre sign-in.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 79 against 65
- Security & auth, 69 against 43
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 54

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

Watch for: Free and individual paid accounts have content used for service improvement, including model training, unless they opt out

### Orca (C)

Good for: Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile.

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
- No incidents deducted, where Kiro CLI loses 5 points for them

Watch for: Anonymous usage data collected by default, with an opt-out


## Why the edge

### Security & auth: Kiro CLI +26

- Kiro CLI (69): Framework reading (telemetry defaults, approvals, guardrails, sandboxing), five lines. Telemetry and content collection are on by default for Free and individual accounts, each with a documented opt-out, and enterprise users are opted out. API keys are long-lived and revocable with no scopes, and administrators must switch key generation on (14). Deny over ask over allow across six scopes, hard-coded denies on Kiro's own settings paths, workspace trust and a managed policy that fails closed. V3 is the default since 3.0.0 (3 November 2026), interactive V3 sessions ask before loading a folder's hooks, agents and MCP servers since 2.33.0, and `/sandbox` puts agent shell commands and local stdio MCP servers in an operating-system sandbox. The sandbox is off unless chosen and doesn't cover the agent, built-in file tools or remote MCP servers, and AWS says managed policies are client-enforced and can be circumvented (17). An untrusted workspace doesn't load its agents, steering, MCP configuration or skills, compound shell commands are split before matching, and the MCP page warns that servers run outside any sandbox (11). Enterprise prompt logging to the customer's S3 bucket covers the CLI, with daily activity reports and OpenTelemetry export, and individuals have local logs only (11). AWS vulnerability reporting through a HackerOne disclosure programme with no paid bounty, CVEs published in security bulletins with credit to reporters, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 scope and HIPAA eligibility. The aws.amazon.com security.txt is valid (Expires 2027-10-16) and kiro.dev/.well-known/security.txt answers 404, so 2 are held back for that and 2 for no bounty (16). 14+17+11+11+16 = 69.
- 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.

### Transparency & trust: Kiro CLI +17

- Kiro CLI (71): Proprietary, with clear terms. The licence page puts the CLI under the AWS Customer Agreement and the AWS Intellectual Property Licence, where the Amazon Q Developer CLI it replaced was Apache 2.0, per the 8 October check (15). The data protection page (updated 23 October 2026) says what is stored for Free, individual and enterprise users, names US East (N. Virginia) for storage, and gives 60 days for Free Tier abuse detection and 30 days for some models. It agrees with sections 50.3 and 50.14 of the AWS Service Terms, read on 8 October. No general retention period for stored content was found (22). The models page has a model lifecycle section with Experimental, Active and EOL stages and dates, and Claude Sonnet 4 ended on 14 October 2026. 3.0.0 made V3 the default as 2.30.0 announced and retired the Classic interface 34 days after the 2.26.0 deprecation notice, but the desktop app and inline autocomplete were retired in the same release with no earlier notice found, and no minimum notice period is stated (14). Telemetry types are listed and `kiro-cli settings telemetry.enabled` turns them off, with collection on by default. The data protection page's CLI steps still point to the desktop app's Preferences, which 3.0.0 retired (15). 15+22+14+15 = 66.
- Orca (54): MIT (30). Privacy and telemetry docs on the site (not read) (18 of 30). No deprecation policy (5). Disclosed with an opt-out (15 of 20). 30 + 18 + 5 + 15 = 68.

### Schema & documentation: Kiro CLI +14

- Kiro CLI (79): Framework reading. A command reference, a settings reference, an exit-code page and a documented rule format for permissions, plus the Agent Client Protocol methods the CLI implements. No published schema for the stream-json events was found (14). kiro.dev/llms.txt indexes every docs page and each has a Markdown twin, though robots.txt disallows both for crawlers (10). The permissions page states the defaults, what each preset allows and when to pick it, and that headless runs treat ask as deny (16). Rules are validated, an unknown preset rejects the session request, and a malformed managed policy fails closed (12). CI examples, exit codes 0, 1, 3 and 4 and hook exit codes are documented, but code 1 covers every other failure (12). Versioned releases with a dated changelog and a 2.x reference kept beside V3 (15).
- Orca (65): Harness reading. A docs site with CLI orchestration and native chat pages (65).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Kiro CLI | Orca | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 57 | 58 | Orca +1 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 65 | Kiro CLI +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 70 | Orca +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 69 | 43 | Kiro CLI +26 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 40 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 73 | 75 | Orca +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 54 | Kiro CLI +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **59.8 · C** | **57.4 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Kiro CLI | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Lovecast Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary. Licensed as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement and the AWS Intellectual Property Licence (https://kiro.dev/license/). The GitHub repository is the public issue tracker and doesn't hold the source | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-14 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | 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 | yes | not read yet |
| Popularity | 4.4k stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Kiro CLI

- -1.0 on 3 November 2026: security
- +0.1 on 28 October 2026: new evidence
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist

### Orca

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Kiro CLI.** Permission rules follow deny over ask over allow, and since 3.0.0 (3 November 2026) the V3 engine with workspace trust is the default. Content from Free and individual paid accounts is used for service improvement, including model training, unless the user opts out, and October releases fixed approval and Windows search-path flaws with no security advisory.

**Orca.** An open-source orchestrator for coding agents with worker agents in their own worktrees, chat and terminal views, a browser and a CLI, on desktop and mobile, with heavy test automation. It collects anonymous usage data by default, and the cloud option's pricing wasn't found.

## Before you call either

### Kiro CLI

1. Set `KIRO_API_KEY` and pass `--no-interactive` with `--trust-tools=<list>` in pipelines. Keep `--trust-all-tools` for disposable environments
2. Pass `--require-mcp-startup` when a run depends on MCP tools. Without it a failed server is logged and the run continues
3. Run 2.34.0 or later. Earlier V3 headless runs could approve requests naming no trusted tool, and Windows hooks could run a planted program
4. Run `kiro-cli settings telemetry.enabled false` and turn off content collection on Free and individual plans. Both are on by default
5. Remove `autocomplete`, `inline`, `translate`, `theme` and `dashboard` from scripts, which 3.0.0 retired. Pass `--v2` to keep the V2 agent

### Orca

1. See the telemetry docs on onorca.dev to opt out of anonymous usage data
2. Use the orchestration CLI to hand a large task to one agent that starts workers

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Kiro CLI or Orca?

Kiro CLI scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Orca's 57.4 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories.

### Are Kiro CLI and Orca open source?

No open-source release is listed for Kiro CLI. Orca is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

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