Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
mini-swe-agent vs Qoder CLI
Qoder CLI scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against mini-swe-agent's 56.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. mini-swe-agent leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
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 51
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 35
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card
- Open source
Watch for
The default local environment runs commands on the host with no isolation and the full host environment
Best for Developers already on Qoder who want the same agent in a terminal, in CI through a PAT, in Zed through ACP, or embedded through the Agent SDK.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 58
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 69
- Maintenance & community, 72 against 49
- Transparency & trust, 64 against 51
Also in its favour
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 3.0 out of 5
Watch for
No local sandbox is documented, and auto mode approves read-only tools on any path
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | mini-swe-agent | Qoder CLI | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 70 | 51 | mini-swe-agent +19 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 58 | 81 | Qoder CLI +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 69 | 80 | Qoder CLI +11 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 56 | 55 | mini-swe-agent +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 35 | mini-swe-agent +25 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 49 | 72 | Qoder CLI +23 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 51 | 64 | Qoder CLI +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | -3 | |
| Total | C 56.7/100 | C 59.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | mini-swe-agent | Qoder CLI |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | SWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford) | Qoder (BRIGHT ZENITH PRIVATE LIMITED) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary, under the Qoder Terms of Service (BRIGHT ZENITH PRIVATE LIMITED, last updated 29 April 2026). No source is published, and the Agent SDK's LICENSE file points to the same terms |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-07-23 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | |
| Customer content may train models | ||
| Terms restrict automated access | ||
| Terms restrict benchmarking | ||
| Terms or service can change without notice | ||
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | ||
| Popularity | 8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk | 5k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | 3.5/5 (4) |
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.
Qoder CLI
A closed-source terminal agent with a documented headless mode, an ACP server, typed TypeScript and Python SDKs and near-daily releases. Permission rules and modes are detailed, but no local sandbox is documented, usage statistics are on by default, and security fixes appear only as one-line release notes with no advisories or disclosure policy.
Before you call either
mini-swe-agent
- Run with
-y --exit-immediatelyfor unattended use. Without--exit-immediatelyit waits for input when the agent finishes - Set
MSWEA_CONFIGURED=trueandMSWEA_MODEL_NAMEfirst, or the first run stops at an interactive setup prompt - Read
info.exit_statusin the-otrajectory file. A run that hits its limits still exits normally - 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 - Strip model keys from the environment commands see, since the local environment passes every host variable to each command
Qoder CLI
- Set
QODER_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKENin CI. The browser sign-in can't complete in a headless run - Pass
--permission-modewith--allowed-toolsin headless runs. Every ask is denied, and--yoloremoves all checks - Set
--max-turnson unattended runs, and branch on exit codes 41 (authentication) and 53 (turn limit) - Set
privacy.usageStatisticsEnabledandaiCodeStatistics.enabledto false in ~/.qoder/settings.json if usage data must stay local - Don't pass
--model lite. The Lite tier was removed on 18 September 2026 and headless requests naming it fail
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, mini-swe-agent or Qoder CLI?
Qoder CLI scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against mini-swe-agent's 56.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. mini-swe-agent leads on reliability and payments & pricing.
Are mini-swe-agent and Qoder CLI open source?
mini-swe-agent is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Qoder CLI.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/mini-swe-agent-vs-qoder-cli.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/mini-swe-agent.json·/api/v1/tools/qoder-cli.json - From a terminal
anchor compare mini-swe-agent qoder-cli(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "mini-swe-agent", "b": "qoder-cli"}at/mcp, no key