HivevsRouta
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Hive
Aden · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
6.52 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.8
- Cost
- 7.0
- Longevity
- 6.2
“Ships a stock market where the community shorts the jobs it expects AI to take, which is either a demo or a hedge.”
Routa
Phodal Huang · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
6.53 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.3
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 7.5
- Longevity
- 5.8
“It puts your agents on a kanban board with a Review column, which is where good intentions have always gone to sit.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Hive | Routa |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux | macos, linux, windows, web |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | No | YesCode is changed by the agents Routa coordinates; Routa owns the board, the worktrees and the review state. |
| Git operations | No | Yes |
| Browser control | Yes | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | any | any |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | No | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | n/a | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 11,102 | 1,821 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Hive | Routa | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.8 | 6.8 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.0 | 5.8 | Hive — The install notes warn that pip install -e . at the repository root creates a placeholder package and Hive will not function correctly, which is a trap shipped as a footnote. |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 7.0 | no preference |
| La Inversora | 6.0 | 6.0 | no preference |
| La Jefa | 5.3 | 6.3 | Routa — Nothing per seat, and it deploys as a compose stack rather than sixty desktop installs, which is the first delivery model here my platform team could actually operate. |
| El Hacker | 8.0 | 7.5 | Hive — Apache-2.0, LiteLLM underneath so a hundred providers and a local Ollama all work, and keys land in an encrypted store at ~/.hive/credentials instead of my shell history. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.