Amp vs Claude Code

Amp

Amp is now its own company and has turned from a pay-per-token agent into a free agent harness plus paid cloud machines: bring a ChatGPT or Claude subscription or your own keys and the agent itself costs nothing, while $20 or $200 a month buys included usage and orb time. It suits developers who want agents running in parallel on remote machines and can live with a fast-moving beta; teams that want a stable editor plugin and fixed terms should look elsewhere.

Pros

• +Hobby tier is free with your own subscriptions, keys and runners, with no Amp token fees
• +Pay-as-you-go model usage at provider API prices with no markup for individuals and non-enterprise workspaces
• +Teams tier adds thread sharing, multiplayer and SAML/OIDC SSO at no extra charge
• +Runs from a CLI on macOS, Linux and Windows via WSL, plus Mac and iOS apps and cloud orbs

Cons

• −Mac and iOS apps are betas that require macOS or iOS 26
• −Pricing changed three times in 2026, so plans read today may not hold
• −Orbs are billed by the minute and by size, so larger machines burn the allowance faster
• −Prepaid credits expire twelve months after purchase

Claude Code

Claude Code is the reference point for terminal-first coding agents: it works from a plain shell, reaches into every editor and chat surface Anthropic ships, and its extension points (MCP, hooks, skills, subagents) are deep enough that teams build their own workflows on it. The buying decision is really about usage: Pro is enough to try it, but sustained agentic work eats the shared five-hour and weekly limits fast, and the realistic budgets are Max at $100-200 or per-token Console billing. Skip it if you want an autocomplete pane or cannot let an agent run commands in your repo.

Pros

• +One engine across terminal, VS Code, JetBrains, desktop, web, mobile, GitHub, GitLab and Slack, sharing CLAUDE.md, settings and MCP servers
• +Extension points for real customisation: MCP servers, hooks, skills, plugins, parallel subagents and an Agent SDK
• +Auto mode with checks on risky commands, scheduled routines and cloud sessions that keep running when the laptop is closed
• +Included in every paid Claude plan from $17/month, with Max tiers bundling API credits

Cons

• −No free tier, and the Free plan explicitly excludes it
• −Usage comes out of the same rolling five-hour and weekly limits as chat, so heavy sessions hit the ceiling on Pro
• −Running it at scale means Max at $100-200 a month or per-token API spend that is hard to forecast
• −IDE extensions and the Linux desktop app still carry beta labels

Is Amp cheaper than Claude Code?

On published entry prices, Claude Code starts lower — $17/mo against $20/mo for Amp. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Does Amp or Claude Code have a free tier?

Amp has a free tier; Claude Code has paid plans only.

Which has a public API, Amp or Claude Code?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.