Amp vs Claude Code (2026): Which Should You Pick?

Pick Amp if you want a coding agent that routes each subtask to the best frontier model across providers, spawns parallel subagents, and gives your whole team shared threads — and you're fine with variable, pay-as-you-go billing. Pick Claude Code if you want the most polished single-model agent, the fastest latency on Anthropic's Claude, and predictable subscription pricing. Both run in the terminal, both support MCP, and the real split is model flexibility versus polish, and credits versus a flat bill. Here's how they compare.

Quick verdict

Amp, from Sourcegraph, is the flexibility-and-teams leader. It's a routing layer that picks the best model per subtask across four modes, auto-spawns subagents to work in parallel, and is built for collaboration with thread sharing and leaderboards. Claude Code, from Anthropic, is the polish-and-predictability leader — a fast, clean single-model agent tied to Claude, billed through a flat subscription. If you want model choice and no vendor lock-in, Amp. If you want the smoothest solo agent with a bill you can forecast, Claude Code.

At a glance

	Amp	Claude Code
Pricing model	Pay-as-you-go credits ($5 min)	Flat subscription + API
Models	Multi-model routing (4 modes)	Claude models only
Surfaces	CLI, web, VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, Zed	Terminal, VS Code, JetBrains
Subagents / parallelism	Auto-spawns parallel subagents + Oracle	Single-model agent loop
Team features	Thread sharing, pooled credits, leaderboards	Solo-focused, fewer collab tools
Context window	~200K	Long-context Claude

Amp

Amp is Sourcegraph's agentic coding tool, and its headline idea is model routing. Instead of locking you to one model, it sits as a layer above the frontier labs and sends each subtask to whichever model handles it best. That routing runs across four modes — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra — which act as a dial for how much reasoning power you're willing to spend. Low leans on fast, cheap models for boilerplate, renames, and mechanical edits; High and Ultra bring in the strongest available models for architecture decisions, gnarly refactors, and debugging that needs real reasoning. In practice that means you're not paying top-tier rates for a one-line change, and you're not stuck with a weaker model when a task genuinely needs the best one.

On top of routing, Amp auto-spawns parallel subagents so a large task gets split and worked on at once rather than serially — one subagent wiring up a component while another writes its tests, for example. It also ships a separate reasoning model called Oracle that Amp can call for the hardest planning steps, essentially a second opinion for tricky design questions before it starts editing. Round that out with Amp Tab inline autocomplete, roughly 200K of context, and MCP support for pulling in external tools, and you get an agent that's more of an orchestration platform than a single loop.

It's also the more team-oriented of the two by a wide margin. Amp offers thread sharing so teammates can open, read, and continue each other's agent sessions; workspace collaboration; and leaderboards that surface who's shipping with the agent. Credits are pooled per workspace, so a team shares one balance rather than juggling individual bills. It reaches you through a CLI, a web app, and IDE extensions for VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, and Zed — the widest surface coverage of the two. The trade-off is cost predictability: the default is pay-as-you-go credits with no hard token caps, so spend scales with what you use, and a heavy week costs more than a light one. Full detail in our Amp review.

Claude Code

Claude Code is Anthropic's terminal-native agent, and it's the one to beat on polish. Where Amp bets on breadth, Claude Code bets on depth in a single model. It's tied to Anthropic's Claude, and that focus shows up in every part of the experience: the agent loop is fast, the edits land cleanly, and it rarely leaves a half-finished mess to clean up. Because there's one model behind it, the behavior is consistent from task to task — you learn how it thinks and it stays that way, rather than shifting as a router hands work to different models.

Its real strength is long autonomous tasks and up-front planning. Give it a multi-step change and it will map out the work, walk the codebase, make the edits in order, and keep enough of the task in its head to finish without losing the thread. That planning discipline is where the single-model polish pays off — it's less prone to the drift you can get when work is split across models mid-task. It runs in the terminal plus IDE integrations for VS Code and JetBrains, supports MCP for external tools, and setup is trivial: install, sign in, and go. Most developers are productive within minutes, with no keys to wire up per provider.

The trade-offs are model choice and collaboration. You run Claude only — there's no cross-provider routing and no escape hatch to a cheaper model for boilerplate or a specialized one for a niche task. And it has less built-in team tooling than Amp: no thread sharing, no pooled workspace credits, no leaderboards. It's a polished solo instrument rather than a collaboration platform. For a developer who values latency, reliability, and a single predictable bill, that's a fair deal. See our Claude Code review and pricing guide for the specifics.

Cost compared

Amp's default is pay-as-you-go credits — a $5 minimum, roughly $10 free to start, and zero markup on the underlying provider API pricing. There are optional subscriptions on top: Megawatt at $20/mo and Gigawatt at $200/mo, with enterprise usage-based billing running about 50% more. Credits pool per workspace and there are no hard token caps, so the model is flexible but harder to forecast. Claude Code, by contrast, bundles into a Claude subscription — Claude Pro at about $20/mo, with higher Max tiers — plus pay-per-token via the API.

For light or bursty use, Amp's credits can come in cheaper because you only pay for what you run. For heavy daily use, Claude Code's flat subscription is easier to budget and won't surprise you. Our Amp pricing guide and Claude Code pricing guide break down the tiers.

Real-world workflow / performance

Say you hand each tool the same job: add a new API endpoint, wire it into three existing files, and write tests. The two agents approach it differently. Amp tends to fan the work out — it can spawn parallel subagents so one thread scaffolds the endpoint while another drafts the tests, and its router pulls in a cheaper model for the boilerplate wiring and a stronger one, or Oracle, when it hits a design decision like how to shape the request validation. On a big multi-file change that parallelism and per-subtask model choice can move fast, and the shared thread means a teammate can pick the session up afterward and see exactly what happened.

Claude Code attacks the same task more linearly and more deliberately. It plans the change first, walks the affected files, and makes the edits in a consistent order with the same model reasoning throughout. That single-model coherence is its edge on longer tasks — it holds the whole change in context and is less likely to drift or leave loose ends, and the low latency keeps the loop tight. Where Amp gives you breadth and speed through parallelism, Claude Code gives you a clean, predictable pass that usually needs less review. On raw multi-file throughput Amp's subagents can win; on edit quality and follow-through on one long task, Claude Code's polish tends to show.

Which should you pick?

Choose Amp if you want model flexibility and no vendor lock-in, per-subtask routing across providers, parallel subagents, and team features like thread sharing and pooled credits — and you don't mind variable, usage-based billing. It's the pick for teams and for developers who want the right model for each job.

Choose Claude Code if you want the most polished single-model agent, top latency and quality on Anthropic's Claude, and a predictable flat subscription. For a solo developer who just wants to ship with the smoothest daily driver, it's the cleaner choice.

To make it concrete, three quick personas:

The platform team lead. You've got five engineers and you want them working in the same agent, sharing sessions, and billing to one pooled balance. You also don't want to bet the team on a single vendor's model. Amp is the obvious fit — thread sharing, workspace credits, and routing across providers are exactly what this setup needs, and variable billing is easy to justify at team scale.

The solo indie developer. You're shipping a product alone, you already pay $20/mo for Claude Pro, and you want the fewest surprises on your bill. Claude Code is the cleaner pick — one flat cost, top latency, and a polished agent that finishes long tasks without much babysitting. You lose model flexibility, but as a team of one you rarely need it.

The cost-conscious tinkerer. Your usage is bursty — heavy some weeks, near-zero others — and you like the idea of paying only for what you run with no markup. Amp's pay-as-you-go credits, a $5 minimum, and roughly $10 free to start let you dip in and out cheaply, and the Low mode keeps routine edits inexpensive. If a predictable monthly line item matters more than pay-per-use, flip back to Claude Code.

Want more options? See the full best AI coding assistants ranking for how both stack up against the field.