Aider vs Qwen Code: both are coding tools on Scriptiii AI Tools. Aider pricing: Free. Free to use. (reported by the maker) Qwen Code pricing: Free. Free to use. (reported by the maker) Both have 0 upvotes.
Aider works best with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, DeepSeek R1 & Chat V3, OpenAI o1, o3-mini & GPT-4o, but can connect to almost any LLM, including local models.
Both listings report Free. Free to use. Pricing is reported by the maker and is not independently verified.
Which has more upvotes, Aider or Qwen Code?
Both have 0 upvotes.
What does each maker say Aider and Qwen Code are for?
Aider: AI pair-programming tool that edits code in your local Git repository from the terminal. Qwen Code: Open-source terminal coding agent from the Qwen team.
"Aider is the precision tool of LLM code gen... Minimal, thoughtful and capable of surgical changes ... while keeping the developer in control." — Reilly Sweetland on X
"Cannot believe aider vibe coded a 650 LOC feature across service and cli today in 1 shot." - autopoietist on Discord
"Oh no the secret is out! Yes, Aider is the best coding tool around. I highly, highly recommend it to anyone." — Joshua D Vander Hook on X
"thanks to aider, i have started and finished three personal projects within the last two days" — joseph stalzyn on X
"Been using aider as my daily driver for over a year ... I absolutely love the tool, like beyond words." — koleok on Discord
Agentic out of the box — Auto-Memory, Auto-Skills, SubAgents, Agent Teams, and MCP. Dynamic workflows, zero setup.
Open-source, inside and out — The framework and the Qwen models are open-source. They evolve together. No vendor lock-in.
Multi-protocol — Supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and Qwen APIs. Any third-party provider or local model (Ollama / vLLM). Switch at runtime.
Beyond the terminal — IDE plugins, Desktop app, Web UI, SDKs, and chat integrations (Telegram / DingTalk / WeChat / Feishu).
[!TIP]
Qwen Code is actively iterating on itself — using its own agent and models to file issues, submit PRs, review code, and run tests. Powered by the community, driven by AI.
Installation
Looking for Qwen Code 1.0 Preview? Get started here. The instructions below are for the main version.
Open a terminal in your project and start Qwen Code:
cd /path/to/your-project
qwen
Inside the session, run /auth and choose Qwen Account with Subscription to sign in with your Plus or Pro subscription, or configure a provider with an API key. Then try:
Explain this repository and show me where to start.
import asyncio
from qwen_code_sdk import is_sdk_result_message, query
async def main() -> None:
result = query(
"Summarize the repository layout.",
{
"cwd": "/path/to/project",
"path_to_qwen_executable": "qwen",
},
)
async for message in result:
if is_sdk_result_message(message):
print(message["result"])
asyncio.run(main())
Daemon Mode
Run Qwen Code as a long-lived service when you want browser, editor, SDK, and automation clients to share agent sessions without each starting a separate process. The daemon provides the built-in Web Shell and an HTTP + SSE API, supports multiple workspaces, and lets clients reconnect to active sessions.
Start it in the foreground and open the Web Shell:
qwen serve --open
The default address is http://127.0.0.1:4170. To run and manage it in the background instead:
By default, the daemon listens on loopback without bearer authentication; any local process that can reach it can use the full API, including code execution. On shared or untrusted hosts, set QWEN_SERVER_TOKEN and use --require-auth. See the Daemon guide for workspaces, authentication, remote access, and the API.
Capabilities
If you know Claude Code, you already know Qwen Code — and then some. We've put significant effort into bringing Qwen Code to feature parity with Claude Code, improving both breadth and reliability across the board.
IM Channels (Telegram / DingTalk / WeChat / Feishu)
✓
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Qwen Code Evaluation
On SWE-bench Verified, seven Qwen Code versions scored 76.40%–77.80% on average using the same Qwen 3.7 Max model (500 tasks, three trials per version).
Qwen Code Desktop — Official desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux
AionUi — A modern GUI for command-line AI tools including Qwen Code
Gemini CLI Desktop — A cross-platform desktop/web/mobile UI for Qwen Code
qwen-audio-agent — Realtime full-duplex voice frontend for Qwen Code over ACP — talk hands-free with barge-in and a local wake word
🦞 Qwen Code Claw — Let other agents (Claude, Codex, etc.) delegate coding tasks to Qwen Code via ACP. Paste this prompt into your agent:
Use Qwen Code as a coding agent. First, fetch and read this skill reference:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QwenLM/qwen-code/refs/heads/main/.qwen/skills/qwen-code-claw/SKILL.md
Then follow the instructions inside to install, authenticate, and use Qwen Code via acpx for all coding tasks.
Aliyun Model Studio CLI — Official CLI for Aliyun's AI platform (bailian-cli). Extends Qwen Code with image/video generation, knowledge retrieval, app orchestration, and model deployment
Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
Acknowledgments
This project was originally based on Google Gemini CLI v0.8.2. We gratefully acknowledge the Gemini CLI team's excellent work. Starting from Qwen Code v0.1, we stopped syncing with upstream and began independent development as a multi-protocol, multi-platform agent framework with deep integrations for Qwen models and beyond.