AQ vs Orca: the same agent fleet, single-player or multiplayer

Published September 6, 2026 · by the AQ team

Choose Orca if you are one developer who wants a free, MIT-licensed desktop cockpit for running many coding agents at once on your own machine. Choose AQ if agents should run on an always-on machine in the cloud and teammates should be able to open the same live session, watch it, and steer it. The two products agree on the core model (many agents, one isolated git worktree per task, your own CLI subscriptions) and disagree on almost everything around it: Orca is a single-user app whose sessions live where the app runs, AQ is a browser-based team platform whose sessions live on a VM and outlive everyone's laptop.

All claims about Orca below are as of September 2026, verified against its GitHub repository (stablyai/orca) and documentation. Orca ships near-daily releases, so check current state on details.

AQ vs Orca at a glance

What is Orca?

Orca (onorca.dev, the stablyai/orca project on GitHub) calls itself the ADE, the agentic development environment, "for working with a fleet of parallel agents." It is one of the fastest-growing developer tools in GitHub history: first commit in March 2026, roughly 62,000 stars by early September, MIT-licensed and free, from Stably AI. The desktop app runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and works with 30+ terminal agents on the subscriptions you already pay for: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode, and effectively any CLI agent.

The feature set is genuinely deep. Fan one prompt across five agents, each in its own isolated git worktree, then compare the diffs side by side and cherry-pick hunks into a merge. Terminals are WebGL-rendered with unlimited splits and scrollback that survives restarts, a design mode sends a clicked UI element's HTML, CSS, and screenshot into an agent's prompt, GitHub and Linear are browsable in-app, and comments dropped on diff lines go back to the agent. A mobile companion (iOS and Android) pairs with your desktop to mirror terminals, type from the phone, and push a notification when an agent finishes. For remote execution there are SSH worktrees (the checkout and agent live on a host you add) and a headless server mode: orca serve turns a Linux box you provision into a remote agent runtime your desktop and phone pair with.

What is AQ?

AQ is the multiplayer coding harness where engineering teams run AI coding agents like Claude Code and Codex together: shared live terminals, a code editor, and app previews, in your own cloud.

Every AQ workspace is an isolated git worktree (branch ai/{id}-{slug}, automatic dependency install, one-click rebase onto main) on a machine dedicated to you: on the Team plan a VM you connect from your own cloud or a dedicated always-on AQ-managed VM, on the Free plan a private sandbox machine AQ creates for you. Agents are the real CLIs your engineers already subscribe to (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor Agent, Kimi, Grok, or plain shells), running in persistent tmux sessions streamed live to the browser; per-user CLI logins mean AQ never marks up model usage. Sessions survive a closed laptop and resume from any device, including a phone. Teammates open the same workspace and watch the same live terminal, editor, and dev-server preview, with terminal input delegated by the owner in one click. Workspaces are team-visible or private and shared with specific people, previews get links that work without an account for viewing, and comments pinned on a preview can be sent to the agent as prompts. Linear intake is native: label an issue ai-task and a workspace appears, status syncs both ways, and ownership follows the assignee.

Where Orca stands out

• Free and open source. MIT license, no account, no paid tier as of September 2026. The only cost is the agent subscriptions you already have.
• The widest agent roster. 30+ CLI agents plus a generic path for any CLI. AQ covers the mainstream CLIs; Orca covers nearly everything with a binary.
• Fan-out comparison as a first-class flow. One prompt to five agents, side-by-side diffs, cherry-pick the winner. AQ runs as many parallel workspaces as you want, but Orca's compare-and-merge UI for racing agents is more built-out.
• Native desktop polish. WebGL terminals, infinite splits, design mode against a real Chromium window, in-app GitHub and Linear, shipped near-daily.

Where AQ wins

• Multiplayer, not single-player. Orca's documentation describes no team features: one developer commanding one fleet, with the mobile app as a remote control for that same person. On AQ a teammate opens the workspace URL and is inside the session: same live terminal, same editor, same running preview, with typing delegated by the owner in one click. Showing someone an Orca session means screen-sharing.
• Always-on by default, not by weekend project. Orca's agents live where the app runs, typically a laptop. Its remote routes are real but self-assembled: you provision a Linux server, run orca serve, and operate it yourself, and a service restart still kills live terminals. On AQ the always-on machine is the product: persistent tmux on a VM, sessions that survive laptop close and resume anywhere, runner health visible in-product.
• Any device with a browser. AQ works from macOS, Windows, Linux, and mobile browsers with nothing to install. Orca needs its desktop app, and the phone app is a companion to a running Orca instance.
• Work that crosses team lines. Owner-managed visibility and sharing, preview links viewable without an account, review links where outside stakeholders comment after a quick email sign-in, and Linear intake where ownership follows the assignee. Orca's GitHub and Linear integrations are in-app browsers for you; AQ's are how work arrives at and leaves a team.

The deeper difference: whose problem is the fleet?

Orca and AQ share a thesis: the unit of AI-assisted work is now a fleet of agents in isolated worktrees, not one assistant in a sidebar. Orca answers it for a person; AQ answers it for a team, and that distinction matters more than any feature row, because the fleet workflow is solitary by default. A July 2026 LeadDev analysis of 25,264 agent-generated pull requests across 2,361 popular GitHub repositories found that in 79 percent of agentic PRs the same developer both reviewed and modified the agent's contribution, and only about one in eight workflows involved multiple humans (LeadDev, July 2026). A better single-player cockpit makes that loop faster without making it less solitary. Making it a team activity requires sharing the session itself, not just the repo: someone else watching the agent work, catching a wrong turn live, taking a handoff mid-run. That is the layer AQ builds and Orca, deliberately, does not. For the vendor-neutral mechanics, see our guides to running multiple coding agents in parallel and monitoring many agent sessions.

Pricing compared

Orca is free: MIT-licensed, no account, no published paid tier as of September 2026, with your agent subscriptions as the only cost, plus whatever server you operate for remote execution. AQ has two public plans: Free (a personal sandbox for one person; AQ creates a private machine in an isolated network, nothing to install, no time limit) and Team at $50 per user per month early access (standard $200, billed monthly, rate locked for your first 12 months), covering VMs you connect from your own cloud or a dedicated always-on AQ-managed VM. Inviting a teammate costs nothing until the person accepts and joins. On both products, agents bill through your own Claude and OpenAI accounts; AQ never marks up model usage.

Bottom line

If you are one developer on one machine, Orca is the best free single-player fleet cockpit available right now, and there is no honest case for paying for AQ instead. The comparison changes when the constraint you hit is Orca's shape rather than its quality: agents that should keep working after the lid closes, a teammate who should see the session rather than a screen-share, work that arrives from a tracker and belongs to a team. Always-on execution and multiplayer are the two things AQ builds in that Orca leaves to you or does not attempt. Evaluating costs nothing on either side: Orca is a free download, and AQ's Free sandbox has no time limit. If the real question is which category of tool you need, our guide to choosing a coding harness maps the space, and the Orca alternatives page covers the wider field.