Amp vs Claude Code
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Amp and Claude Code.
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Verdict: Claude Code wins
Claude Code scores 4.4/5, edging out Amp at 3.8/5. Experienced developers who live in a terminal and want an agent that can carry complex, multi-file coding work in a real repository.
Amp AI coding agent by Anthropic alumni | Claude Code Agentic AI coding in your terminal | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 3.8 (1 review) | 4.4 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | usage-based |
| Starting Price | Free tier available | Pricing varies |
| Best For | Senior, terminal-comfortable developers who want unattended agents on remote machines and are happy to fund them with linked subscriptions and their own keys. | Experienced developers who live in a terminal and want an agent that can carry complex, multi-file coding work in a real repository. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | free tierbyok | api access |
| Visit Amp → | Visit Claude Code → |
Amp
Pros
- + Orb workflow is real: I dispatched an environment-setup and test-green task to a remote orb, closed the laptop, and resumed from another machine with the work done
- + No Amp token fees or limits — BYOK and linked ChatGPT/Claude/X subscriptions run at subscription cost, and self-hosted orbs and own runners are free on every tier
- + Teams workspaces add SSO (SAML/OIDC), shared billing, pooled credits and shared BYOK routing at no extra seat charge
- + Transparent per-action economics: credits at provider API prices with no markup for individuals, published tier allowances (45,000 minutes on Megawatt), and clearly stated orb sizes
- + Genuinely unattended parallelism — agents in separate orbs with their own repo clones and tooling, so no worktree juggling or port conflicts in my runs
Cons
- - Orb minutes burn while agents idle: a slow install consumed my allowance at the same per-minute rate as active work, and I found no per-workload spend cap
- - Hobby has no included orb time or agent usage — 'free' means your tokens and your own machines
- - Custom endpoint URLs and gateway routing (OpenRouter, Bedrock, Azure Foundry) are early access for paid tiers behind an experimental flag, with no public rollout date
- - Homegrown vocabulary (orbs, portals, the Dial) and a terminal-first surface make onboarding deliberately steep for GUI-oriented developers
- - Amp's published 60–65% average usage discount is a vendor claim without a stated basis; included usage does not roll over month to month
Claude Code
Pros
- + Handles multi-file refactors end to end — in my 40-file migration it found all 11 call sites and greened the test suite without me touching code
- + Prompt caching makes long API sessions affordable: I measured 88% savings on a 170-turn session versus uncached billing
- + Hooks, subagents and CLAUDE.md give real control over behavior; my auto-format hook eliminated formatting noise entirely
- + Everything lands in git, so reviewing agent work is the familiar diff workflow rather than a trust exercise
Cons
- - No free tier — the floor is a $20/month subscription or a funded API key at time of writing
- - Token billing punishes restart-heavy habits: compacts break the cache and I saw per-turn cost jump from $0.11 to $0.29 after a restart
- - Terminal-first design will not fit teams wanting a visual or browser-based workflow
- - Occasionally edits code outside the scope of the request, adding review overhead on large PRs
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Amp or Claude Code?▼
Claude Code scores higher at 4.4/5 vs 3.8/5 for Amp, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Amp and Claude Code?▼
Amp: Amp is a coding agent and development environment from Sourcegraph that runs unattended tasks in the cloud or locally through a CLI. Claude Code: Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool, running in the terminal and in IDEs to read, edit and test code across a whole project.
Is Amp or Claude Code more affordable?▼
Amp starts at €0/mo, Claude Code starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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