Pi vs Qwen Code: Which AI Agent Is Better?
An in-depth comparison of Pi and Qwen Code across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
An in-depth comparison of Pi and Qwen Code across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
Looking for the Oh My Pi (omp) fork instead?See Oh My Pi vs Qwen Code →
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.
PiQwen CodeChoose Pi if you are developers who want a fast, minimal, hackable terminal agent with full control over context and models. 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, Pi leads in 3 of six categories (reliability, speed and value), while Qwen Code leads in 2 (autonomy and ease of use). On price, Pi runs free (mit), bring your own model and is open source; Qwen Code runs free (apache 2.0), bring your own provider and is open source.
What it costs to run Pi or Qwen Code
Best API for Pi →
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.
See the trial and activation steps →
More on Pi: What Does the Pi Coding Agent Cost to Run, and How Do You Make It Predictable? · How do I use DeepSeek in the Pi coding agent?
Pi is an open-source terminal coding agent and agent harness created by Mario Zechner (badlogic, creator of libGDX) and published under MIT by Earendil. Its philosophy is radical minimalism: by default the model gets a small set of tools (read, write, edit, bash), and everything else, from subagents to plan mode, lives in TypeScript extensions. That keeps the loop fast, the context clean, and the behavior fully under your control. It supports 30+ model providers with mid-session switching, session branching and compaction for long tasks, and custom OpenAI-compatible providers via a simple models.json.
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.
Pi and Qwen Code both run on Standard Compute
