Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

mini-swe-agent vs OpenMausBot

OpenMausBot scores 65.4 (B) on agent readiness against mini-swe-agent's 57.1 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. mini-swe-agent leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 875 harnesses comparisons

Which one, for what

mini-swe-agent C

Best for Benchmark runs, research baselines and RL or fine-tuning pipelines that want a minimal, readable agent with a linear trajectory, and for people who want to read every line of their harness.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 60
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 50

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

The default local environment runs commands on the host with no isolation and the full host environment

OpenMausBot B

Best for A person or an outside agent who wants several CLI agents (Claude Code, Codex, Grok, ACP CLIs) organised as named bots with their own computers, routines and approvals, driven by MCP or a CLI.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 58
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 69
  • Maintenance & community, 74 against 49

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

New bots start at Full access, which approves provider permission requests without a card

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runmini-swe-agentOpenMausBotEdge
Reliability16%207060mini-swe-agent +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25890OpenMausBot +32
Agent ergonomics13%16.26977OpenMausBot +8
Security & auth14%17.55659OpenMausBot +3
Payments & pricing10%12.56050mini-swe-agent +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84974OpenMausBot +25
Transparency & trust7%8.85659OpenMausBot +3
Negative events≤15-4-2
TotalC 57.1/100B 65.4/100

Facts side by side

Factmini-swe-agentOpenMausBot
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorSWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford)Supamaus Software Private Limited
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transportsstdio
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Tools exposednone20
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-232026-10-30
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-10-10
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-10-18
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk8.2k stars, 3.5k npm/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (4)none

Verdicts

mini-swe-agent

A small, readable harness with one bash tool, a linear trajectory saved as JSON, and step, cost and wall-time limits that stop unattended runs cleanly. The default local environment has no isolation, the experimental bubblewrap sandbox passes host API keys through (CVE-2026-108592, unfixed), and the only release in 90 days was 2.4.6 on 23 July 2026.

OpenMausBot

A bounded 20-tool MCP server with typed schemas, annotations and idempotent sends, and a headless CLI with JSON output and exit codes, let another agent hand work to a bot team and wait on it. New bots start at Full access, so provider permission requests pass without a card, and usage analytics stay on until switched off.

Before you call either

mini-swe-agent

  1. Run with -y --exit-immediately for unattended use. Without --exit-immediately it waits for input when the agent finishes
  2. Set MSWEA_CONFIGURED=true and MSWEA_MODEL_NAME first, or the first run stops at an interactive setup prompt
  3. Read info.exit_status in the -o trajectory file. A run that hits its limits still exits normally
  4. For untrusted repositories use -c mini.yaml -c environment.environment_class=docker -c environment.image=<image>. The local and bubblewrap environments both expose host variables
  5. Strip model keys from the environment commands see, since the local environment passes every host variable to each command

OpenMausBot

  1. Ask the owner for a pairing code from Settings > Phone, exchange it at POST /api/auth/pair, and set OPENMAUSBOT_TOKEN with an explicit OMB_PORT
  2. Pass a send_id with every send_bot_message and send_channel_message, so a retry returns the first receipt
  3. Use wait_for_conversation instead of polling, and on needs-user stop and tell the owner a card is waiting
  4. Check a bot's access level with the owner before sending work. New bots run at Full access unless defaults were changed
  5. Ask the owner to switch off Settings > General > Usage analytics if nothing beyond model calls should leave the machine

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, mini-swe-agent or OpenMausBot?

OpenMausBot scores 65.4 (B) on agent readiness against mini-swe-agent's 57.1 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. mini-swe-agent leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

Are mini-swe-agent and OpenMausBot open source?

Yes. mini-swe-agent is open source (MIT). OpenMausBot is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with mini-swe-agent or OpenMausBot

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