# Kite vs Melius (slim)

> Melius scores 54.2 (C) to Kite's 47 (D) for design files. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kite-new-vs-melius.md (~5,300 tokens) · this version ~3,580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kite-new-vs-melius.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kite-new-vs-melius
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-02
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Melius scores 54.2 (C) on agent readiness against Kite's 47 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Kite leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do design files.

- Kite: D 47, rank #1039 of 1268 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kite-new.min.md
- Melius: C 54.2, rank #835 of 1268 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/melius.min.md
- Kite, good for Agents that make banners, social posts, landing pages and screens for a team that will edit and comment on them in a shared file, drawing in HTML and CSS against the team's design system and picking up changes from @-mention comments, without a desktop app or browser tab kept open. Ahead on Security & auth, 50 against 43; Payments & pricing, 30 against 20; Maintenance & community, 78 against 66. Also Free to start without a card.
- Melius, good for An agent producing batches of ad creative, product images or short videos on a shared canvas that people then review, with many models behind one key. Ahead on Reliability, 69 against 33; Schema & documentation, 70 against 62; Agent ergonomics, 51 against 44; Transparency & trust, 56 against 44.

| Category | Kite | Melius |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 33 | 69 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 62 | 70 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 44 | 51 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 50 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 78 | 66 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 44 | 56 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Kite | Melius |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Kite | Melius AI, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://kite.new/api/mcp` | `https://api.melius.com/api/v1` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under Kite's terms of use (updated 8 September 2026). No source is published; the only public code is an MIT plugin manifest repository (itsloukman/kite-agent-plugins) that points agents at the hosted server | Proprietary service under Melius's terms of service. The mel CLI on npm is MIT, with no public source repository found |
| Tools exposed | 59 | 75 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| MCP registry | `new.kite/kite` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-11-01 | 2026-09-10 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-14 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | none | 9 npm/wk |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Melius +36: Kite 33 (Hosted reading, for the platform and its remote MCP server. No public status page was found. None is linked from the docs or the footer, https://kite.new/status answers 404 and status.kite.new does not resolve (0). No readable incident history, so the floor (5). Limits are published with numbers on the account page, 200 agent actions a day on Free, reset at midnight UTC, unlimited on Pro; 60 new files an hour; 20 comments on one file every 10 minutes; 600 exported layers an hour; 20 keys; file caps of 400 MB and 250,000 layers. auth.md says registration and agent calls are rate-limited without a per-minute figure (12 of 15). 429 is documented in auth.md with 'back off' and no Retry-After, 401 with a refresh-once-then-rediscover rule, and the drawing guide says to edit layers in place rather than redraw; no idempotency key on any write and no safe-retry guidance for layer_draw, so a retried draw adds a second frame (6 of 15). No SLA. The terms (8 September 2026) say Kite is provided as is, uptime is not guaranteed and files may be lost (0). The hosted server carries no beta label and the registry entry is 1.0.0; the product launched on 6 October 2026 and the desktop apps are 0.1.16 (10). 0+5+12+6+0+10 = 33.); Melius 69 (Graded on the hosted REST API and MCP server. status.melius.com runs on incident.io with component history for Web app and MCP, though it has no API component (20). Its history lists no incidents from July to October 2026, which is as far back as the page goes (30). No rate-limit numbers are published. The docs say only that no plan has a monthly request quota and that bursts can return 429 (0). 429s carry `Retry-After` and a `retryAfterSeconds` body field, and the docs give a bounded retry policy and tell clients to check canvas or run state after a timeout or 5xx on a write. There are no idempotency keys (12 of 15). No SLA found (0). The API and MCP server carry no beta label, but the CLI is at 0.16.2 and Cast and media-URL inputs are marked beta (7 of 10).)
- Maintenance & community, Kite +12: Kite 78 (Closed service with a dated changelog. The latest entry is 1 November 2026 (30). 15 dated entries between 6 October and 1 November 2026, including Pro on 18 October, Windows, shaders and website design systems on 23 October and the agent page, version, comment and export tools on 25 October (20). Support is hello@kite.new, a Support link in the docs, 'your feedback first in line' on Pro and dedicated support on Team; no community channel, forum or issue tracker, and the plugin repository has no issues (8 of 15). new.kite/kite 1.0.0 is in the official MCP registry under a DNS-verified namespace since 21 October 2026 (15). No packages to judge; the MIT plugin repository was pushed once on 7 October 2026 and the desktop apps update themselves (5 of 10). 30+20+8+15+5 = 78.); Melius 66 (The newest dated release is the CLI, 0.16.2 on 10 September 2026, 28 days before the check (30). npm lists 19 CLI versions since 10 July 2026 (20). Closed service with no public changelog or issue tracker. Support is by email at support@melius.com and a Discord server linked from the site (5 of 15). The server is not in the official MCP registry and there is no SDK library, though the CLI is current on npm and Homebrew (5 of 15). The CLI has three dependencies, needs Node.js 20 and is published from GitHub Actions through npm trusted publishing. Its source is not public (6 of 10).)
- Transparency & trust, Melius +12: Kite 44 (Closed service. The terms of use (8 September 2026) run to about 200 words on content, prohibited use, links, availability and changes and name no legal entity, address or governing law, so the contracting party is unknown (8 of 30). The privacy policy (14 October 2026) names eight services, says files are not read, trained on or sold, discloses masked session replays and error replays, gives the agent token's 7-day life renewable to 90 days (matching auth.md and the integration page), the 30-day purge of deleted pages and the one-month deletion of a closed account's files, and the Figma token's handling; no DPA and no retention period for logs beyond the providers' own (20 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices; the terms promise email or in-app notice of changes that matter and the changelog dates additions, not removals (4 of 20). Telemetry (PostHog, Sentry) is disclosed with what it excludes and no opt-out beyond product-news emails; service locations are given only for PostHog and Sentry (US) (10 of 20). 8+20+4+10 = 42.); Melius 56 (Closed service under published terms effective 28 August 2026. The CLI package is MIT with no public repository (15 of 30). The terms, the privacy policy and the pricing FAQ agree that user input and outputs are not used to train models, and say third-party model providers process content under their own terms without a guarantee from Melius. Retention is described as a reasonable period with no numbers, and no DPA was found (14 of 30). Deprecated models keep working for an unstated grace period with an in-app warning. No API deprecation policy found (5 of 20). No sub-processor list or hosting location found beyond a statement that data is processed in the United States (4 of 20).)
- Payments & pricing, Kite +10: Kite 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs, llms.txt, auth.md, the pricing pages or the terms (0). Plan prices are public and machine-readable at pricing.md, Free, Pro $20 per editor a month or $16 yearly, Team $35 or $28, with no per-call or per-action price since agent actions are counted on Free and unlimited on Pro (10 of 20). Free plan with 3 files and 200 agent actions a day, sign-up by emailed link or Google, no card mentioned anywhere (20). An agent can register itself as an OAuth client, but a person must sign up in a browser and click Allow, or make an API key in Settings (0). 0+10+20+0 = 30.); Melius 20 (No machine payment protocol (0). Plan prices and monthly credits are public, but per-model credit costs sit behind an authenticated endpoint and the top-up price is not published (10 of 20). A Free plan at $0 gives trial credits. The amount is not published and we couldn't confirm that sign-up needs no card (10 of 20). A person signs up in a browser and creates the first key in Team settings. POST /api-keys needs an existing key (0).)
- Schema & documentation, Melius +8: Kite 62 (MCP reading, since the MCP server is the only surface an outside agent reaches. No tool input schemas were read. The server card at /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json declares tools without listing them, and llms-full.txt describes every tool in prose with argument names in the skill, so typed inputs are the vendor's to show and were not seen (10 of 25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt, skill.md, auth.md and pricing.md are served as text and Markdown (10). Descriptions say what each tool does and when to use it, such as file_search over file_list when the user describes a file, layer_edit rather than redrawing, never base64 in HTML, never a picture of a design, guide_read's six topics, and the view-only rule (16 of 20). Inputs named in the docs are typed in prose, with enumerations for audience (link, restricted), export formats (svg, react, tailwind, html), sticky colours, shader bases and guide topics, and bounds for videos (100 MB) and fonts (4 MB), but the main write tool takes one HTML string and layer_edit a free CSS object (8 of 15). Worked HTML examples in skill.md, a prompt per client page, and auth.md's 401, 400 and 429 responses; no example tool call or response and no MCP error shape (8 of 15). A dated changelog with 15 entries from 6 October to 1 November 2026 that names agent-facing changes (page, version, comment and export tools on 25 October), server version 1.0.0; no versioned tool surface or deprecation policy (10 of 15). 10+10+16+8+8+10 = 62.); Melius 70 (Public OpenAPI 3.0.2 spec with 59 operations (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown copy of every docs page (10). 58 of the 59 operations have a summary and no description. The MCP reference gives each of 75 tools one line, with ordering rules for `get_guide`, `show_presence` and `canvas_plan_layout`, and the tool definitions themselves need a signed-in client, so we didn't read them (8 of 20). Request bodies are typed with 336 enums, ranges, UUID formats and required fields, with 52 open `additionalProperties` objects (13 of 15). 401, 403 and 429 are declared on every operation and 400, 404 and 409 where they apply, but the spec has no examples and most error bodies are a bare `message` (9 of 15). The path is versioned at /api/v1 and the CLI states semantic versioning. No public changelog found (5 of 15).)
- Agent ergonomics, Melius +7: Kite 44 (MCP reading. 59 tools (61 through the Mac app) with no toolsets, read-only subset or dynamic loading; guide_read moves the long instructions out of tool descriptions into on-demand reads, but tools/list still carries 59 definitions (5 of 25). Output is sized by asking for one page in file_outline, one node in layer_source and layer_render, layer_search by name, words or type, file_search over content, comment_list with unread_only and include_resolved, request_list per file; file_list is newest-first with no documented paging (14 of 20). OAuth errors are documented with recovery steps, web_capture says when a page was cut short and an unknown shader base is refused, but a picture Kite cannot fetch is left out silently and no tool error shape is documented (9 of 20). No readOnlyHint or destructiveHint documented and no idempotency keys; version_save before a big change and version_restore undoable both ways, file_archive reversible and no permanent delete, layer_draw's replace argument for swapping a node (7 of 20). Few required parameters (file_new takes a title, layer_draw a file and HTML, finish_working a file), defaults in the drawing guide, and an MIT plugin repository for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Grok Bot; no SDK, since the vendor points at the official MCP SDKs (9 of 15). 5+14+9+7+9 = 44.); Melius 51 (The MCP reference lists 75 tools, in the over-30 band, with `get_guide` and `get_docs` loading guidance on demand and 18 Cast tools shown only to teams with access (10 of 25). Four list operations take `limit` and `offset` and three take `search`, canvas content can be narrowed to one node or to media summaries, and the CLI has `--fields` (14 of 20). REST errors carry `statusCode`, `error` and `message`, the CLI adds a `code` and a `suggestion`, and `CANVAS_TOO_LARGE` is documented as not worth retrying. A shortage of credits arrives as a plain 400 (14 of 20). No idempotency keys, and we couldn't read MCP annotations without an account. The docs do give safe-retry guidance (5 of 20). Auto model selection and defaults keep required fields few. There is no SDK library, only the CLI and generated code samples in six languages (8 of 15).)