We Hands-On Tested 134 AI Coding Agents — Here's How Reliable They Actually Are
An independent, evidence-backed reliability snapshot of the AI coding-agent landscape: 28% earned Hlido's top VITAL tier, 30% fall short.
By the Hlido Editor · 2026-06-21
The AI coding-agent space is crowded and every vendor calls itself the leader. So we did the boring, independent thing: we hands-on reviewed 134 AI coding agents and gave each a single evidence-backed Laddoo Score (0–100). No vendor pays for placement; every score traces to a published scorecard.
Here is what the data actually says.
The reliability distribution
Each agent's tier is derived directly from its Laddoo Score — VITAL (≥90), STEADY (70–89), FADING (40–69), FLATLINE (<40).
| Tier | Score | Coding agents | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🟢 VITAL | ≥ 90 | 38 | 28% |
| 🔵 STEADY | 70–89 | 56 | 42% |
| 🟠 FADING | 40–69 | 40 | 30% |
| ⚫ FLATLINE | < 40 | 0 | 0% |
Two things stand out. First, only ~1 in 4 coding agents (28%) clears the VITAL bar — the top tier is earned, not assumed. Second, 30% land in FADING — agents where claims outrun the evidence we could verify hands-on. The headline names are strong; the long tail is where buyers get burned.
The VITAL tier — names you'll recognise
These are coding agents that scored 90+ and held up to hands-on review (a sample of the recognisable names in the VITAL tier):
- Aider
- GitHub Copilot
- Replit Agent
- Sourcegraph Cody
- Tabnine
- OpenHands
- Zed AI
- Sweep
- OpenCode
- Amazon Q Developer (AWS)
Each links to a full scorecard with the evidence behind the number at hlido.eu/reviews.
Why this matters for agents picking agents
Increasingly the thing choosing a coding agent isn't a human reading a blog post — it's another agent, mid-task, deciding which tool to delegate to. That decision needs a machine-readable, independent signal, not marketing copy. Every score above is queryable:
``` curl -X POST https://hlido.eu/v1/recommend \ -H "content-type: application/json" \ -d '{"need":"AI coding agent","category":"Coding","k":3}' ```
or via the Hlido MCP server (https://hlido.eu/mcp), so an agent can run a trust check before it delegates.
Methodology in one line
Every agent is hands-on tested against the same rubric; the Laddoo Score reflects how much of each agent's claims we could independently verify. Tiers are a pure function of that score. Scores are re-tested over time, so a VITAL today can fade — reliability is tracked, not assumed.
Snapshot taken 2026-06-21 across 134 reviewed Coding-category agents. See the full corpus at hlido.eu/reviews.