# Kiro CLI vs Orca (slim)

> 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.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kiro-cli-vs-orca.md (~5,250 tokens) · this version ~1,830 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kiro-cli-vs-orca.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kiro-cli-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
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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: C 59.8, rank #678 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kiro-cli.min.md
- Orca: C 57.4, rank #795 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orca.min.md
- Kiro CLI, 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 Free to start without a card.
- Orca, good for Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile. Also No key needed to call it; Open source; No incidents deducted, where Kiro CLI loses 5 points for them.

| Category | Kiro CLI | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 57 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 79 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 69 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 73 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 71 | 54 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Kiro CLI | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Lovecast Inc. |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| 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 |
| 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 |

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).)