Amp vs Qwen Code: Which AI Agent Is Better?
An in-depth comparison of Amp and Qwen Code across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
An in-depth comparison of Amp and Qwen Code across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
Either way, you pay for the model calls. A median coding-agent day on our gateway is 95 requests and 8.6 million tokens. The table prices every step at one model’s rate.
Both run on Standard Compute, where each step goes to the cheapest model that can do it: routine steps go to efficient open models, hard ones to frontier models such as Claude Fable 5.1 or GPT-6 Astra.
| Model | Typical day | Busy day |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $7.34 | $59.10 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $3.67 | $29.55 |
| GPT-6 Luna | $0.23 | $2.43 |
Fixed monthly plans from $19. Eligible new accounts can try $0.25 of compute first, no card. Trial terms
Pick a winner in each category. You can change your vote anytime.
AmpQwen CodeChoose Amp if you are developers and teams who want an opinionated, high-autonomy agent and accept its token appetite. Choose Qwen Code if you are developers who want a free, Claude Code-style terminal agent that runs Qwen models next to any other provider.
In our editorial scoring, Amp leads in 4 of six categories (output quality, autonomy, reliability and ease of use), while Qwen Code leads in 1 (value). On price, Amp runs free hobby tier / $20/mo individual and is proprietary; Qwen Code runs free (apache 2.0), bring your own provider and is open source.
What it costs to run Amp or Qwen Code
Best API for Amp →
4 options compared, with prices and limits
Best API for Qwen Code →
4 options compared, with prices and limits
Standard Compute sends each step to the cheapest model that can do it, on providers we vet for price, uptime and speed. Plans start at $19 a month, and eligible new accounts can try $0.25 of compute with no card. Choose your agent below to connect.
Amp started inside Sourcegraph and became an independent company in December 2025. It stays deliberately opinionated: instead of a model picker it offers a four-step effort dial (low, medium, high, ultra), with Claude Opus 5.5 behind medium since September 28, 2026, and leans into autonomy, with subagents such as Oracle and Librarian for parallel work. Since September you can also pin the models behind each mode. Work happens in shareable threads across its CLI, web and desktop apps, plus cloud runners it calls orbs. Pricing is a free Hobby tier and a $20/month Individual plan that adds orb time; model usage bills from credits at providers' API prices with no markup. Every tier can also bring its own keys or endpoint through Model Routing, link a ChatGPT subscription, or, since October 10, 2026, run a Claude Code mode on a Claude Pro or Max plan. It is token-hungry by design, so heavy use still gets expensive.
Qwen Code is Alibaba's Qwen team's open-source coding agent. It was originally based on Gemini CLI v0.8.2, stopped syncing with upstream at v0.1 and has been developed on its own since, with frequent releases (v0.25.2 on October 15, 2026). It ships subagents, agent teams, skills, hooks, MCP, plan mode, LSP and git worktrees, plus VS Code, JetBrains and Zed plugins, a desktop app and Telegram, DingTalk, WeChat and Feishu channels. Unlike Gemini CLI it speaks the OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini APIs, so any compatible provider works through modelProviders in ~/.qwen/settings.json. The free Qwen OAuth tier ended on April 15, 2026: the tool is still free, and the models come from Alibaba's Coding Plan or Token Plan, a built-in third-party provider, a local model or a custom provider.
Amp and Qwen Code both run on Standard Compute
