FractalvsPlandex
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Fractal
Trampoline AI · Terminal agent
#224OSS
Panel
4.62 spec wins
- Reliability
- 3.7
- Usefulness
- 4.2
- Cost
- 6.0
- Longevity
- 4.7
“The runtime is described as self-harnessed, which is a very confident way to say the loop calls itself.”
Plandex
Plandex · Terminal agent
#168OSS
Panel
4.84 spec wins
- Reliability
- 4.8
- Usefulness
- 5.2
- Cost
- 5.7
- Longevity
- 3.3
“The install script lives on a domain that no longer resolves, which is one way to enforce self-hosting.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Fractal | Plandex |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | 2M token effective context window |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | No | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | No |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | predict-rlm | Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, any OpenRouter or OpenAI-compatible model |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | No | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 200 | 15,689 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Fractal | Plandex | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 4.5 | 5.3 | Plandex — Adopt Plandex only if you are happy running the server yourself; everyone else should pick OpenCode and keep the diff-review idea as a wish. |
| El Crítico | 4.3 | 4.5 | Plandex — The first failure mode is the install command: the documented one-liner fetches from a domain that no longer resolves. |
| El Profesor | 5.3 | 5.5 | Plandex — The cumulative diff sandbox is the most principled edit-staging design among terminal agents, and the 2M-token context claim has no measurement behind it. |
| La Inversora | 4.8 | 3.0 | Fractal — 200 stars and seventy-three public mentions in a year, from a named company, which is more attention than most projects here and more than the software has earned. |
| La Jefa | 3.5 | 3.5 | no preference |
| El Hacker | 5.5 | 6.8 | Plandex — MIT, runs entirely on my box with start_local.sh, talks to Ollama or OpenRouter, and I would be the maintainer, which is the honest price of the diff sandbox. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.