Orca vs Symphony
Orca (Stably) and Symphony (OpenAI) side by side on public data, as of Oct 10, 2026.
Orca has 3.2x the GitHub stars of Symphony (88.8K against 27.6K). Symphony shipped 3 stable releases in the past 90 days.
Which should you choose?
Choose Orca if
- you want to switch between model providers (9 documented against 0)
- you want to run it unattended in scripts or CI
- you want subagents or several agents working in parallel
Choose Symphony if
- you prefer the more widely used tool, with more docs and answers around (Gid Score 76 against 50)
Built from documented features, official prices, status pages and usage data on this page; it does not judge output quality.
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | Orca | Symphony |
|---|---|---|
| Gid Score | 50 | 76 |
| Overall rank | #66 | #6 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | — | — |
| Downloads, 7-day change | — | — |
| Downloads, 30-day change | — | — |
| VS Code installs | — | — |
| Marketplace rating | — | — |
| GitHub stars | 88.8K | 27.6K |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | — | — |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 4 | 219 |
| Latest stable release | 1.4.224 · today | 0.0.3 · 25d ago |
| Stable releases, 90 days | 3 | |
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | — | — |
| Price | Free (OSS) | Free (OSS) |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| First released | March 2026 | February 2026 |
| Interfaces | — | — |
| Models |
Trends
Orca
Orca is an open-source desktop agent development environment that runs Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi and other CLI agents side by side, each in its own git worktree, with terminals and a mobile companion app for monitoring agents.
Pricing: Free and open source (MIT).
Latest release 1.4.224:
- Automations can now set the agent's model and effort for each run. In the automation editor, open Advanced and fill in Extra agent arguments (or use --extra-agent-args with orca automations create…
- SSH hosts now run a managed Orca server. Orca ships its own runtime and sets it up when you connect, so connections no longer fail because a host has the wrong Node version or no build tools. A…
- Native chat (experimental): If you turned on Chat UI with chat as your default view, supported agents now open in the structured chat by default. If Terminal was your default, new agent tabs stay…
- More in native chat: Recent versions of OpenCode (including 2.x), Pi and OMP open as structured chats on this computer. Agents can draw charts, diagrams and mockups right inside a reply, on…
Symphony
Symphony is a specification and experimental Elixir reference implementation from OpenAI that watches an issue tracker such as Linear and spawns Codex agents to implement tasks, returning CI status, PR reviews and walkthroughs for human review.
Pricing: Free and open source (Apache-2.0).
Latest release 0.0.3:
- Add Symphony release skill
- Scrub GitHub and GitLab authentication token aliases
- Use Bearer authentication for GitLab API requests
- chore: release Symphony 0.0.3
Orca vs Symphony: common questions
Which is more popular, Orca or Symphony?
Symphony has a Gid Score of 76 against 50 for Orca. The score combines package downloads, editor installs, GitHub activity and attention, updated daily.
Do Orca and Symphony support MCP servers?
Orca documents support for MCP servers; Symphony's documentation does not.