# Muse Code vs Orca (slim)

> Orca scores 57.4 (C) to Muse Code's 56.2 (C) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/muse-code-vs-orca.md (~5,750 tokens) · this version ~2,330 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/muse-code-vs-orca.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/muse-code-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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Orca scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Muse Code's 56.2 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Muse Code leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

- Muse Code: C 56.2, rank #833 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/muse-code.min.md
- Orca: C 57.4, rank #791 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orca.min.md
- Muse Code, good for Developers who want Meta's Muse models, Muse Wonder Full included, in a terminal or CI agent with the sandbox and approvals on from the first run. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 84 against 65; Agent ergonomics, 79 against 70; Security & auth, 67 against 43.
- Orca, good for Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile. Ahead on Reliability, 58 against 45; Payments & pricing, 40 against 20. Also No key needed to call it; Open source; No incidents deducted, where Muse Code loses 5 points for them.

| Category | Muse Code | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 45 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 84 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 79 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 67 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 75 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 56 | 54 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Muse Code | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Meta | Lovecast Inc. |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary binary, used under the Meta Model API Terms of Service, which cover Meta's coding harness. Subscriptions are also under the Meta Subscription Terms of Service. The TypeScript and Python SDKs in the linked repository are MIT. | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-24 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-02 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | 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 | 63k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, Muse Code +24: Muse Code 67 (Framework reading (telemetry defaults, approvals, guardrails, sandboxing), five lines. A browser session or a Model API key, cleared by `muse logout`. Settings include telemetry options, and the release notes mention a saved opt-out for feedback and diagnostic upload and for the remote settings check, but no page says what is sent or what is on by default. Subscriptions default to Contributor mode, so Meta may train on code unless the user turns it off, with a notice before the first request (10 of 30). Ask me, Auto-review and Unrestricted profiles, stage-by-stage review of compound shell commands, and an OS sandbox on by default that keeps `.git`, `.muse` and `.agents` read-only and refuses to run when it can't confirm containment. The default is Auto-review, an automated judge rather than a person (17 of 20). Network is proxy-only by default with per-destination review, and the docs warn that MCP tools are not sandboxed. The 1.4.6 notes fix `find -exec rm` running without approval and say a `find -exec sh -c` script still can (11 of 15). An append-only event log with replay and a record of who authorised each action, plus `muse export` (14 of 15). Meta's bug bounty, named in the SDK's SECURITY.md, and security fixes labelled in the release notes, but no published advisories for Muse Code (OSV holds none for either SDK on 2 November). The 12 October reading of www.facebook.com's security.txt is struck (that host's robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot); the line is held as meta-marketing-api's was with security.txt unread (15 of 20). 10 + 17 + 11 + 14 + 15 = 67. Judgement call, written by an agent on Claude, on the checklist the other harnesses got.); 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.)
- Payments & pricing, Orca +20: Muse Code 20 (Harness reading of the published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Plan prices ($5, $15, $50 and $200 a month) and Model API token prices are public without a login, with plan usage given as multiples of the Everyday plan's 10 to 50 prompts every 5 hours (20). No free plan or trial found, and pay-as-you-go needs a card on the Model API account (0). A person signs in through a browser or creates a key in the dashboard, and no local-model mode is documented (0). 0 + 20 + 0 + 0 = 20.); Orca 40 (Scored on the cloud option. No protocol (0). The cloud price wasn't found on the pages read (0). The desktop app is free and MIT with no card (20). The local app needs no sign-up that we found (20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 40.)
- Schema & documentation, Muse Code +19: Muse Code 84 (Framework reading. `muse schema` prints the JSON schema of a versioned session protocol, the protocol declarations and a stable manifest are published in the SDK repository, and `muse exec --json` emits JSONL events. No JSON Schema for `settings.json` was found (22 of 25). llms.txt at dev.meta.ai/llms.txt with a Markdown copy of each page (10). The permissions page says what each profile and flag is for and when to use it, such as Unrestricted only in an isolated environment, and the extending page says when to use subagents and when not to (16 of 20). Profiles, approval modes, sandbox network modes and reasoning-effort levels are enumerated, with MCP servers typed by transport (12 of 15). Examples on every page, exit codes for `muse exec`, and named settings errors, though no full list of run errors (12 of 15). A changelog for every version to 1.4.13, with no dates (12 of 15). 22 + 10 + 16 + 12 + 12 + 12 = 84.); Orca 65 (Harness reading. A docs site with CLI orchestration and native chat pages (65).)
- Reliability, Orca +13: Muse Code 45 (Local-package reading. Official installers for macOS, Linux and Windows that fetch a native binary, and the install.sh script checks the launcher's SHA-256 against the advertised sum (20). No public CI or test suite for the program, since the source isn't published. The SDK repository's workflows only publish to npm, PyPI and crates.io, by hand (0). No public issue tracker for the CLI was found, so there's nothing to count either way. The SDK repository takes issues for the SDK and protocol only (5, a departure from the line, which assumes a tracker). Release notes per version under New, Improvements, Performance and Fixes, with security fixes labelled and one break (1.4.8's profile refusal) announced in the 1.4.6 notes, but no dates and no breaking-change heading (5). 1.4.13 (15). Same reading as Claude Code, which is also closed source. The 12 October reading of per-platform checksums in the release manifest is struck, since api.meta.ai's robots.txt now disallows every path. 20 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 15 = 45.); Orca 58 (Local software. Desktop and mobile builds and a Homebrew cask (20). Unit, end-to-end and platform test workflows; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Tags to v1.4.251, no changelog file (8). Version 1.4 (15). 20 + 15 + 0 + 8 + 15 = 58.)
- Agent ergonomics, Muse Code +9: Muse Code 79 (Framework reading, adapted to a harness driven by a pipeline. `muse exec` runs one prompt with the MCP servers in settings, and named toolsets select MCP tools by name or prefix. We found no deferred tool loading in Muse Code's own docs (18 of 25). `--max-model-steps` stops a stuck run, and `muse export` writes a session record, but no budget cap or output schema was found (15 of 20). Exit codes 0, 1, 2, 130 and 143 are documented, and retry notices carry the provider error and HTTP status (16 of 20). `--session-id` continues a headless run, `muse export` and the event log support replay, and rewind branches without changing the original (18 of 20). TypeScript and Python SDKs. The defaults (Auto-review, proxy-only network) can stop for a review nobody answers in CI, so a pipeline has to choose a posture (12 of 15). 18 + 15 + 16 + 18 + 12 = 79.); Orca 70 (Harness reading. An orchestrator agent that splits work across workers in their own workspaces, chat or raw CLI, a browser and a CLI in one app (70).)