Aider vs Claude Code
Read from each vendor’s own pages last night, so it does not go stale the way a written comparison does.
CLI agent
Aider
The original git-native terminal pair programmer. Bring-your-own-key, no subscription.
Free
CLI agent
Claude Code
Anthropic's terminal coding agent. The highest-adoption CLI agent by developer survey share.
Free, then $20 / mo
Measured — counted from real repositories, nightlyAsserted — read from the vendor docs, dated
| Compared on | Aider | Claude Code |
|---|---|---|
| Asserted — what each vendor publishes about itself | ||
| Category | CLI agent | CLI agent |
| Vendor | Aider AI | Anthropic |
| Status | Active | Active |
| How it charges | Free | Subscription |
| Entry price | Free | Free, then $20 / mo |
| Plans | No named tier on Aider AI's pricing page could be read with a price beside it. |
|
| Default model | None — you choose | anthropic/claude-opus-4.8 |
| Your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Source | Open source · Apache-2.0 | Proprietary |
| Measured — counted on the last nightly run | ||
| Stars | 47.9K | 140.1K |
| Maintenance | 75/100 | 92/100 |
| Days since last push | 72 | 9 |
| Top model in it | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash · $0.17 | Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.8 · $10.00 |
| Its volume | 765M tokens | 747B tokens |
What has changed on either of them
1 entry| What changed | Kind | Was, and is now | Confidence | Occurred |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code changed the quota wording on its pricing pageClaude Code | Quota change | limits 24 hourslimits 20x more usage, 20x the usage, 24 hours, 5x more usage, unlimited projects to organize chats | low |
