Factory DroidvsZero
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Factory Droid
Factory · Terminal agent
#65MCP
Panel
6.41 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.5
- Usefulness
- 7.0
- Cost
- 5.7
- Longevity
- 6.5
“Charges $200 a month for the Max plan and still governs you with rolling rate limits, so the ceiling is the product.”
Zero
Gitlawb · Terminal agent
#6OSSMCP
Panel
7.05 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.7
- Usefulness
- 7.0
- Cost
- 8.2
- Longevity
- 6.2
“It accepts image input in a terminal, a sentence that would have ended a career in 2019.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Factory Droid | Zero |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local, cloud, sandbox | local, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows, web | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | YesThe first-party Droid Control plugin (droid plugin install droid-control@factory-plugins) ships an `agent-browser` driver - a Playwright-backed CLI with Chrome DevTools Protocol support that navigates, fills forms, clicks and captures screenshots, powering /qa-test and /demo. | YesBrowser and terminal control helpers ship with the npm and release builds; source builds need those helper binaries on PATH or configured in local-control settings. |
| Sandboxed execution | YesOS-level sandboxing isolates Droid from the filesystem and network using kernel-enforced policies (https://docs.factory.ai/autonomy-and-safety/sandbox.md). | NoZero ships a native Linux sandbox helper using seccomp rather than Docker; source builds must build the `zero-linux-sandbox` helper separately. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes`zero exec` returns exit codes and has a documented GitHub Action recipe. |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude, GPT, Gemini, open-source and local models via BYOK | OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, Mistral, xAI, Qwen, Kimi, GitHub Models, Fireworks, MiniMax, Ollama, LM Studio |
| Bring your own model | YesCustom models via `anthropic`, `openai` or `generic-chat-completion-api` providers with your own baseUrl and apiKey, plus an AWS Bedrock block with awsRegion/awsProfile. | Yes |
| Local models | YesBYOK config in ~/.factory/settings.json takes a baseUrl, so Ollama (http://localhost:11434/v1), LM Studio (http://localhost:1234/v1) and vLLM are all documented targets. | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | subscription | byok |
| Starts at | $20/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | No | Yes |
| License | proprietary | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 41 | 1,688 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Factory Droid | Zero | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 7.3 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.3 | 6.8 | Zero — Package builds ship the browser and terminal control helpers; a source build needs those binaries on PATH and expects you to build the Linux sandbox helper separately. |
| El Profesor | 6.8 | 7.3 | Zero — Sessions can be resumed or forked, which makes a continuation a controlled variable, and the headless mode emits text, JSON or stream-JSON rather than prose only. |
| La Inversora | 7.0 | 5.5 | Factory Droid — Factory is selling to the org chart, with Slack, Teams, a Teams tier and Enterprise custom, and that is the buyer who tolerates rate limits, so the pricing ladder is a feature. |
| La Jefa | 6.5 | 6.8 | Zero — Nothing to license for sixty, and it is the rare tool that returns meaningful exit codes with a documented continuous integration recipe, so it can gate a build. |
| El Hacker | 4.8 | 8.5 | Zero — MIT, twenty-five providers with Ollama and LM Studio among them, and it works as an MCP server as well as a client, so my tools go both ways. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.