Factory vs Orca (2026): Which Vibe Coding App Is Better?

Both are popular terminal coding agents. Here is how Factory and Orca stack up on price, strengths and weaknesses, and which one we would pick.

Factory

Droids: coding agents for the terminal, IDE and CI from Factory

7.8 /10

Pricing: Paid from $20/mo

Pros

Works across terminal, IDE, Slack and CI
Team and enterprise controls
Custom droids for repeatable jobs

Cons

Aimed more at teams than hobbyists
Pricing based on usage tokens

Visit Factory ↗

Orca

An ADE for running fleets of coding agents in parallel worktrees, from desktop or mobile

8.0 /10

Pricing: Open source

Pros

Runs multiple coding agents in parallel isolated worktrees with diff comparison
Free, open source (MIT), backed by Y Combinator
Mobile companion apps for monitoring/steering agents remotely

Cons

No hosted/managed tier documented — you bring your own agent subscriptions
Extremely fast recent star growth is worth watching, even though the activity looks organic

Visit Orca ↗

Factory vs Orca at a glance

	Factory	Orca
Editor score	7.8 / 10	8.0 / 10
Pricing model	Paid	Open source
Starting price	$20/mo	Free
Reader upvotes	0	0
Best for	agent, enterprise	ade, parallel-agents, claude-code
Agent Skills support	Yes	No
Subagents support	Yes	No
MCP support	Yes	No
AGENTS.md support	Yes	No
Plugins support	Yes	No
Hooks support	Yes	No
Rules support	No	No
Agent skills in this directory	46	0
Subagents & agents in this directory	7	3
MCP servers in this directory	72	0

Our pick

Orca edges it with a score of 8.0 versus 7.8. Orca is the better fit if you value: runs multiple coding agents in parallel isolated worktrees with diff comparison, free, open source (mit), backed by y combinator. Choose Factory instead if you need: works across terminal, ide, slack and ci, team and enterprise controls.