AgentIndex icon
AgentIndex
hive logo
hive
★ 11.1k
vs
harness-sdk logo
harness-sdk
★ 8.9k

hive vs harness-sdk

hive: Hive runs colonies of agents for business work: a long-lived queen agent pilots one unit of a task, saves the method as a skill, then fans the rest out to parallel workers that write results into a shared SQLite tracker. It ships persona queens, measured memory, in-process tools, MCP support and crash-safe state, and works with most LLM providers through LiteLLM.; harness-sdk: This monorepo holds the Strands Agents SDKs for Python and TypeScript plus Strands harness, a fully assembled agent created with one create_harness() call. It runs in your own process and covers the agent loop, tools, MCP, multi-agent patterns, memory, sessions, guardrails, tracing and evals across Bedrock, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini and other providers.

01

TL;DR

hive logo
hiveMulti-Agent · ★ 11.1k

Research or data-collection jobs made of many similar units, such as checking dozens of companies

Read hive full review →
harness-sdk logo
harness-sdkMulti-Agent · ★ 8.9k

Replacing a hand-rolled agent loop with a maintained SDK

Read harness-sdk full review →
02

Side-by-Side Comparison

Field
hive logohive
harness-sdk logoharness-sdk
Category
Multi-Agent
Multi-Agent
Stars
★ 11.1k
★ 8.9k
License
Apache-2.0
Apache-2.0
Install Command
git clone https://github.com/aden-hive/hive.git && cd hive && ./quickstart.sh
pip install strands-harness
Updated
4d ago
1d ago
Open Source
Yes
Yes
Website
↗ Visit
↗ Visit
GitHub
↗ GitHub
↗ GitHub
Tags
multi-agent, agent-runtime, python
agent-sdk, python, typescript
03

Features

hive logohive
01Queen and worker model: orchestration is a tool call (run_worker, run_playbook) rather than a predefined graph
02Shared SQLite tracker per colony, so progress can be queried, audited and resumed
03Persistent markdown memory benchmarked on LongMemEval
04Built-in shell, file, search, scraping and chart tools plus any MCP server via hive mcp add
05Cron, interval and webhook triggers, with Sentinel escalation to Telegram or Slack
harness-sdk logoharness-sdk
01Strands harness: a ready-made agent with default model, tools, memory, sessions and context management
02Lower-level SDKs in Python (3.10+) and TypeScript (Node 22+) to own the agent loop yourself
03Lifecycle controls such as turn limits, token budgets, cancellation and hooks on every step
04Built-in MCP, structured output, streaming, multi-agent patterns, guardrails, tracing and evals
05Model portability across Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Ollama and custom providers
04

Use Cases

hive logohive
↳Research or data-collection jobs made of many similar units, such as checking dozens of companies
↳Growth, RevOps, lead generation and content tasks handled by persona agents
↳Long-running batch work that must survive crashes and pick up where it stopped
harness-sdk logoharness-sdk
↳Replacing a hand-rolled agent loop with a maintained SDK
↳Building production agents on AWS with Bedrock models
↳Prototyping a coding or research agent quickly with the harness and CLI
↳Adding tracing, guardrails and evals to existing agent code
05

Best For

hive logohive
Most Popular
harness-sdk logoharness-sdk
EssentialTrending
FAQ

FAQ

What is the difference between hive and harness-sdk?
Both hive and harness-sdk are in the Multi-Agent category. hive has 11.1k stars, while harness-sdk has 8.9k stars.
Which is better, hive or harness-sdk?
The best choice depends on your use case. Choose hive if Research or data-collection jobs made of many similar units, such as checking dozens of companies, and harness-sdk if Replacing a hand-rolled agent loop with a maintained SDK.
Is hive free or open source?
Yes, hive is open source on GitHub (Apache-2.0).
Is harness-sdk free or open source?
Yes, harness-sdk is open source on GitHub (Apache-2.0).
Cloud Infrastructure
Ad

Deploy on DigitalOcean

Host your MCP servers, Docker containers, and AI agents with $200 free credit over 60 days.

Claim $200 Free Credit
→

Related

Alternatives to hive →Alternatives to harness-sdk →hive details →harness-sdk details →