Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Orca vs Vibe-Trading

Vibe-Trading and Orca score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 57.8 (C) and 57.4 (C). Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1500 harnesses comparisons

Which one, for what

Orca C

Best for Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Vibe-Trading loses 9 points for them

Watch for

Anonymous usage data collected by default, with an opt-out

Vibe-Trading C

Best for A person or a pipeline that wants a ready-made finance research agent over free market data, with backtests, swarm reviews and exports, run on their own machine or used as an MCP server by another agent.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 63 against 58
  • Schema & documentation, 72 against 65
  • Security & auth, 70 against 43
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 75

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Three advisories published 2 October 2026 cover 0.1.0 to 0.1.6, two critical, and 0.1.16's email TLS and cross-site fixes got no advisory

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Security & auth Vibe-Trading +27

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.

Vibe-Trading 70

Harness reading used for nanobot and goose. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. No telemetry code was found in the source at v0.1.18, and the only call to PyPI is the owner-run vibe-trading update. The API answers only loopback clients without API_AUTH_KEY, Docker binds 127.0.0.1 and runs as user vibe, and the MCP HTTP transport binds 127.0.0.1 with a Host and Origin allow-list against DNS rebinding but no token. Broker keys go to the OS keyring; model keys sit in agent/.env in clear text. The docs carry no statement that nothing is collected (24). Live orders need a mandate that only the owner commits through the web UI or API, with hard caps and a kill switch, and an optional TAP mode waits for human approval of each Alpaca write. No order tool is exposed over MCP, and shell tools are off on the API and every MCP transport unless enabled. The local CLI runs bash and file writes without asking, and generated backtest code runs as a network-capable subprocess with a narrowed environment and no sandbox (13). Reader and search tools add warning-only security_warnings from regex rules, and external MCP tool hints are treated as untrusted in the source. The claude-cli provider's tool filters are described as convenience filters, not a boundary (9). A live-action ledger written append-only with a hash-chained copy, run cards with hashed execution records, tool traces and per-run token usage (13). SECURITY.md with private advisory reporting and a five-business-day acknowledgement. Three advisories were published on 2 October 2026 with CVE identifiers, five months after the 0.1.7 fix, while the email TLS and cross-site settings fixes in 0.1.16 got none. No security.txt and no bounty (11). 24+13+9+13+11 = 70.

Payments & pricing Vibe-Trading +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.

Vibe-Trading 60

Read with the self-hosted rule. No payment protocol (0). Free under the MIT licence with nothing to buy from the project, so 20, 20 and 20 on the last three lines. It runs with a local model through Ollama and needs no sign-up with the project. QVeris paid data, reached through a disclosed referral link, is a third party's product and is not scored.

Schema & documentation Vibe-Trading +7

Orca 65

Harness reading. A docs site with CLI orchestration and native chat pages (65).

Vibe-Trading 72

Harness reading of the lines, as for nanobot. The MCP server's tools take typed JSON Schema inputs generated from Python signatures through FastMCP, with a string output schema, and the API server serves FastAPI's OpenAPI file locally (keyless on loopback, behind the key otherwise). No published OpenAPI file or tool manifest outside the running program (20 of 25). No llms.txt on vibetrading.wiki, where /llms.txt redirects to the home page, and the docs are drawn by script from content.en.js. The repository carries Markdown READMEs in seven languages and an agent skill file, agent/SKILL.md (5 of 10). Tool descriptions say what each does, its arguments and what to call first, such as list_skills() before load_skill. The server's own header says every tool is read-only apart from refresh_strategy_evidence, while write_file is also exposed (14 of 20). Inputs are typed, but many choices are free strings (protocol, risk_tier, format) and several take free dictionaries (8 of 15). Many worked examples in the README and a troubleshooting page that names failure states such as no_progress and the 403 from another device; tool errors come back as JSON with an error_type (12 of 15). Dated CHANGELOG.md, GitHub release tags and versioned docs, though the docs still name 0.1.16 as latest (13 of 15).

Maintenance & community Vibe-Trading +7

Orca 75

Tags to v1.4.251 and commits on 6 November 2026 (30). Many releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current builds (15). Extensive CI (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.

Vibe-Trading 82

v0.1.18 was tagged on 21 October 2026, 12 days before this check (30). Six releases in the 90 days from 4 August, 0.1.13 (tag 10 August) to 0.1.18, from the repository's tags; PyPI couldn't be read on 2 November (20). 771 commits on main in the 30 days to 2 November, 233 of them after v0.1.18, the last on 2 November; the 25 October repository page showed 7 open issues and 57 open pull requests, not re-read. Issue and pull request threads weren't read, a judgement call (18 of 25). An MCP server that isn't in the official MCP registry (searches for vibe-trading and hkuds on 2 November 2026 found nothing). It is published on PyPI, as a Docker setup and on ClawHub (5 of 15). Hash-locked requirements checked in CI on three operating systems, Dependabot set to monthly, and dependency floors raised for named CVEs, most recently on 29 October (9 of 10). 30+20+18+5+9 = 82.

Reliability Vibe-Trading +5

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.

Vibe-Trading 63

Read with the local-software lines, as for nanobot and Agent Zero, since the owner runs it. vibe-trading-ai installs from PyPI for Python 3.11 or newer, with classifiers for 3.11 to 3.13, and a Docker Compose setup ships in the repository (20). A CI workflow runs the test suite on pushes and pull requests to main, with hash-locked dependency checks on Linux, macOS and Windows, and the repository holds 961 test files. Whether the latest runs on main passed couldn't be read, because GitHub's Actions pages weren't reachable (15 of 25). The repository page showed 7 open issues and 57 open pull requests on 25 October 2026, per that check (GitHub's pages answer 403 on 2 November), against 771 commits in the 30 days to 2 November, and the 0.1.18 notes list two known issues already fixed on main. Issue threads weren't read (18 of 25). CHANGELOG.md says it follows Semantic Versioning, with dated entries from 0.1.8, a Known issues section and an upgrade note for the LangChain 1.x move in 0.1.10, but on 0.x breaking changes ride in minor versions and there is no Breaking section (10 of 15). Version 0.1.18 with the classifier Development Status 4, Beta (0).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrcaVibe-TradingEdge
Reliability16%205863Vibe-Trading +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26572Vibe-Trading +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.27067Orca +3
Security & auth14%17.54370Vibe-Trading +27
Payments & pricing10%12.54060Vibe-Trading +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87582Vibe-Trading +7
Transparency & trust7%8.85453Orca +1
Negative events≤150-9
TotalC 57.4/100C 57.8/100

Facts side by side

FactOrcaVibe-Trading
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorLovecast Inc.HKUDS
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT
Tools exposednone82
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-062026-10-21
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Popularitynone37k stars

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Orca

An open-source orchestrator for coding agents with worker agents in their own worktrees, chat and terminal views, a browser and a CLI, on desktop and mobile, with heavy test automation. It collects anonymous usage data by default, and the cloud option's pricing wasn't found.

Vibe-Trading

Vibe-Trading runs on the owner's machine under the MIT licence, ships near-daily fixes with a dated changelog, and keeps order tools out of its MCP server, with live orders gated by an owner-committed mandate. Three advisories, two critical, covered versions before 0.1.7, a 0.1.16 credential fix got no advisory, and the local CLI runs shell commands without asking.

Before you call either

Orca

  1. See the telemetry docs on onorca.dev to opt out of anonymous usage data
  2. Use the orchestration CLI to hand a large task to one agent that starts workers

Vibe-Trading

  1. Run 0.1.16 or later. Earlier versions carry three published advisories, including unauthenticated API access with an RCE chain, and send the email password without checking TLS certificates
  2. Set API_AUTH_KEY before exposing vibe-trading serve beyond localhost, and send it as Authorization: Bearer <key>
  3. Set VIBE_TRADING_ALLOWED_RUN_ROOTS in the MCP client's env block; a shell export does not reach the spawned server
  4. Use vibe-trading run -p "..." --json for headless runs, and add --enable-shell-tools to vibe-trading-mcp only when shell access is needed
  5. Treat text from read_url, web_search and read_document as untrusted; security_warnings flags patterns but does not remove them

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Orca or Vibe-Trading?

Vibe-Trading and Orca score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 57.8 (C) and 57.4 (C).

Are Orca and Vibe-Trading open source?

Yes. Orca is open source (MIT). Vibe-Trading is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Orca or Vibe-Trading

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