What is Crush?
Crush is a coding agent that runs in the terminal, built by Charm, the company behind the Bubble Tea and Lip Gloss libraries for terminal apps. It reads and edits files, runs shell commands, talks to language servers (LSPs) for type and symbol information, and calls MCP servers over stdio, HTTP or SSE. You can switch models in the middle of a session without losing context, keep several sessions per project, and run `crush serve` so more than one client shares the same workspace.
It works with Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, Bedrock, Vertex, Azure, Groq, Cerebras and a dozen other providers, plus local models through Ollama, llama.cpp or LM Studio. Charm also sells its own model service, Hyper, which it repriced on 16 October 2026 into weekly credit plans from $10 a month. The binary is a single Go program for macOS, Linux, Windows, Android and the BSDs. v0.99.0 shipped on 29 October 2026.
Is Crush worth it?
Crush is a serious second choice to OpenCode for developers who want a model-agnostic agent in the terminal. The repository has about 28,900 stars, roughly an eighth of OpenCode's, but it ships at a similar clip: v0.96.1 on 21 September, three point releases in October and v0.99.0 on 29 October 2026, with a nightly build on top. There are about 530 open issues and pull requests combined.
The design choices are conservative in useful ways. Every tool call asks for approval unless you allow that tool by name, and `permissions deny` hides a tool from the model altogether. Read-only shell commands such as `git status` run without asking only when Crush can show the whole command is inert. Language-server support means the agent gets real type errors and symbol locations rather than grep results, which matters most in Go, Rust and TypeScript codebases. Configuration moved this year to `crushrc`, which is Bash with Crush-specific built-ins; the README warns that the file is trusted code and should not be run in a directory whose config you have not read.
The licence is the first thing a legal team will notice. FSL-1.1-MIT allows internal use, modification and redistribution, but forbids offering Crush, or something substantially similar, as a commercial product that competes with Charm. Each release converts to MIT on its second anniversary. For a developer or a company using it internally this changes nothing; for a vendor wanting to embed or resell it, it rules Crush out where Apache-licensed Cline or MIT-licensed OpenCode would not.
Hyper, Charm's own model service, is optional and was repriced on 16 October 2026. The old $20 plan with daily credits and the free 100 monthly credits are gone. Individual plans now run from $10 a month for 180 credits a week to $200 for 1,200, with one credit worth 5 cents, a five-hour usage cap and a limit on parallel requests; zero data retention is only on the Business plans, $30 to $220 per user. Most users will pair Crush with their own API keys instead.
Telemetry is on by default: pseudonymous usage metrics tied to a device hash, with prompts and responses excluded according to the README. `CRUSH_DISABLE_METRICS=1` or `DO_NOT_TRACK=1` turns it off.
Where it earns its place
A Go developer on a 12-person backend team
Have an agent fix type errors across packages without guessing at symbols
Add gopls with `lsp add go --command "gopls"` and the agent works from the compiler's diagnostics rather than text search. With a Claude or GPT key the only cost is tokens; Crush itself is free for internal use.
A security-minded platform engineer
Let an agent run in a monorepo without it touching deploy tooling
Deny the bash and write tools by default, allow only named tools, and leave auto-approval to Crush's inert-command check for things like `git status`. Turn metrics off with DO_NOT_TRACK=1.
A freelance developer on a fixed monthly budget
Cap what the agent can cost in a month
Hyper's $20 Classic plan gives 250 credits a week, worth $12.50 at 5 cents a credit, with a five-hour cap and three parallel requests. Heavier weeks need the $50 plan or prepaid credit from $5, so a local model through Ollama is the zero-cost fallback.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Install with Homebrew, npm (@charmland/crush), Winget, Scoop, apt, yum, Nix or `go install`; run `crush` in a repository and pick a provider or add a key. First task in a few minutes.
- Integrations
- Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, Vercel, Bedrock (Anthropic models only, without caching), Vertex, Azure OpenAI, Groq, Cerebras, xAI and others; Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio and LiteLLM locally; MCP over stdio, HTTP and SSE; LSPs; AGENTS.md and CRUSH.md context files.
- Data and privacy
- Prompts go to the provider you configure. Pseudonymous usage metrics are on by default and exclude prompts and responses; DO_NOT_TRACK=1 disables them. Hyper offers zero data retention on Business plans only. Licence FSL-1.1-MIT.
- Cost at scale
- No paid edition of Crush; spend is model tokens. On Hyper, a 20-person team on the $40 Business Class plan pays $800 a month for 250 credits a week each.
- Limits
- About 530 open issues and pull requests; competing commercial redistribution barred until each version's second anniversary; flags such as --yolo are set by whichever client starts a shared server first.
What’s good
- Per-tool approval, deny lists and a provably-inert check for read-only shell commands
- Language-server context and MCP over stdio, HTTP and SSE, with OAuth for HTTP servers
- Switch models mid-session without losing context
- Single Go binary on macOS, Linux, Windows, Android and the BSDs
- Frequent releases: v0.99.0 on 29 October 2026
What’s not
- FSL-1.1-MIT is source-available, not open source; competing commercial use is barred for two years
- Usage metrics on by default (prompts excluded)
- crushrc config is executable Bash, so a cloned repo's config must be read before running
- Hyper repriced in October 2026; zero data retention only on Business plans
Best for
Developers who want a polished, model-agnostic terminal agent with language-server context and fine-grained tool permissions, and who will not resell it.
Crush alternatives
Crush: common questions
- Is Crush worth it?
- Crush is a carefully built terminal agent with sensible permission controls, but its licence is not open source and Charm's own model plans changed shape two weeks ago. We rate it 4.1 out of 5.
- How much does Crush cost?
- Free to use under FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available; each version becomes MIT two years after release). Bring your own API keys or local models, or pay Charm's Hyper: individual plans $10 to $200/month with weekly credits at 5 cents each, Business plans $30 to $220 per user with zero data retention, or prepaid credit from $5.
- What are the downsides of Crush?
- FSL-1.1-MIT is source-available, not open source; competing commercial use is barred for two years; usage metrics on by default (prompts excluded); crushrc config is executable Bash, so a cloned repo's config must be read before running; hyper repriced in October 2026; zero data retention only on Business plans.
- Who is Crush best for?
- Developers who want a polished, model-agnostic terminal agent with language-server context and fine-grained tool permissions, and who will not resell it.
- How much does Crush cost for a team or in production?
- No paid edition of Crush; spend is model tokens. On Hyper, a 20-person team on the $40 Business Class plan pays $800 a month for 250 credits a week each.
- Is Crush safe for company data?
- Prompts go to the provider you configure. Pseudonymous usage metrics are on by default and exclude prompts and responses; DO_NOT_TRACK=1 disables them. Hyper offers zero data retention on Business plans only. Licence FSL-1.1-MIT.
- What are the best Crush alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are OpenCode, Qwen Code, OpenAI Codex CLI and Cline.
Answers checked Nov 2, 2026.
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