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

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 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

Qoder CLI C

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

CategoryWeight this runmini-swe-agentQoder CLIEdge
Reliability16%207051mini-swe-agent +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25881Qoder CLI +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.26980Qoder CLI +11
Security & auth14%17.55655mini-swe-agent +1
Payments & pricing10%12.56035mini-swe-agent +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84972Qoder CLI +23
Transparency & trust7%8.85164Qoder CLI +13
Negative events≤15-4-3
TotalC 56.7/100C 59.3/100

Facts side by side

Factmini-swe-agentQoder CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorSWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford)Qoder (BRIGHT ZENITH PRIVATE LIMITED)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary, 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 documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-07-232026-10-16
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno 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
Popularity8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk5k npm/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (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

  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

Qoder CLI

  1. Set QODER_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN in CI. The browser sign-in can't complete in a headless run
  2. Pass --permission-mode with --allowed-tools in headless runs. Every ask is denied, and --yolo removes all checks
  3. Set --max-turns on unattended runs, and branch on exit codes 41 (authentication) and 53 (turn limit)
  4. Set privacy.usageStatisticsEnabled and aiCodeStatistics.enabled to false in ~/.qoder/settings.json if usage data must stay local
  5. 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.

Other comparisons with mini-swe-agent or Qoder CLI

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