Claude Code vs Amp: what 5 developers chose.
3,051 opinions. 5 developers named a direct preference: Amp 5–0. Approval is 54% vs 90%.
If you want autonomy, choose Claude Code. If you want UX, choose Amp. The 5–0 direct split is not a landslide; it is a difference in working style.
Choose Claude Code if you…
- Want the larger evidence base
- Value strong autonomous execution
- Need many firsthand reports
Choose Amp if you…
- Prioritize UI and UX
- Want visible costs
- Prefer automatic model selection
Autonomy for Claude Code. UX for Amp.
Net sentiment per topic: praise minus complaints, as a share of mentions. Positive means more praise than complaints. Hover a dot for the raw counts.
Net sentiment = praise minus complaints, as a share of each tool's mentions. The dot lanes are only for readability; position is the score.
View data table
| Topic | Claude Code | Amp | Mentions |
|---|---|---|---|
| UX | -3 | +100 | 437 / 5 |
| Code quality | +12 | +100 | 429 / 4 |
| Cost & pricing | -18 | +60 | 313 / 5 |
The same decision, from both sides.
Paraphrased from comments where a developer named a preference or described a switch. Each links to the original.
Picked Claude Code 0 developers
No explicit switches recorded.
Picked Amp 5 developers
Opus works better in Amp and other third-party harnesses, while Claude Code trades quality for cost savings.
Prefers Amp's handoff feature over Claude Code's compaction for carrying work across sessions.
Calls Amp a much better agent than Claude Code but says Claude Code's subsidized subscription is hard to beat on price.
While i appreciate anthropic making a proof of concept like they did with claude code cli on which they can then do RL to optimise the patterns that work, I expect this to be as unusable as the cli itself. Its a big difference if a model provider internalises something like thinking mode which mainly depends on context and text or if they try to grab a part of the agent loop which has to run on the side of the systems we build and use. We cannot allow model providers to own the browsers, CLIs, memory, IDEs, extensions and other tooling. Its not just a matter of power but also they just suck at
The numbers.
| Metric | Claude Code | Amp |
|---|---|---|
| Approval | 54% | 90% |
| Last 90 days | 51% | – |
| Opinions | 3,026 | 25 |
| Developers | 2,204 | 24 |
| First-hand opinions | 2,397 | 22 |
| Direct picks | 0 | 5 |
| Type | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Made by | Anthropic | Sourcegraph |
| Website | Visit ↗ | Visit ↗ |
Related matchups.
Claude Code vs OpenAI Codex
181–62 direct picks, and a clear difference in what developers optimise for.
Claude Code vs OpenCode
73–42 direct picks, and a clear difference in what developers optimise for.
Claude Code vs Cursor
61–42 direct picks, and a clear difference in what developers optimise for.
How to read this comparison.
Approval is the positive share of opinions that took a side, with the rank based on the lower bound of a 90% confidence interval. Direct picks count comments where a developer explicitly preferred one tool or described switching. Small samples are noisier; check the opinion counts.
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