Aider vs Claude Code
Aider (Aider-AI (Paul Gauthier)) and Claude Code (Anthropic) side by side on public data, as of Oct 6, 2026.
Claude Code has 241.3x the weekly package downloads of Aider (14.8M against 61.3K). Claude Code has 3.0x the GitHub stars of Aider (150K against 49.4K). Over the last 30 days downloads moved -58% for Aider and -36% for Claude Code. Claude Code shipped 74 stable releases in the past 90 days.
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | Aider | Claude Code |
|---|---|---|
| Pulse Score | 34 | 80 |
| Overall rank | #84 | #3 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | 61.3K | 14.8M |
| Downloads, 7-day change | down 1.5% | up 11.6% |
| Downloads, 30-day change | down 57.8% | down 36.4% |
| VS Code installs | — | 27.1M |
| Marketplace rating | — | 3.7 / 5 (894) |
| GitHub stars | 49.4K | 150K |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | 276 | 28.3K |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 10 | 1,350 |
| Latest stable release | 0.86.0 · 14mo ago | 2.1.290 · yesterday |
| Stable releases, 90 days | 0 | 74 |
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | — | 57.9% · v4.0 |
| Price | Free (OSS) | $20/mo |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary |
| First released | June 2023 | February 2025 |
| Interfaces | CLI | CLI, IDE extension, Desktop, Web, Mobile, SDK |
| Models | Multiple LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and others) via user-supplied API keys | Anthropic Claude models via Claude plans, a Console API key or supported third-party cloud providers |
Trends
Aider
Open-source AI pair-programming tool for the terminal that edits files in a local git repository and commits the changes. It works with multiple LLM providers using the user's own API keys.
Pricing: Aider is free and open source; users pay their chosen LLM provider directly with their own API keys.
Latest release 0.86.0:
- Added support for all GPT-5 models.
- Added support for Grok-4 via xai/grok-4 and openrouter/x-ai/grok-4 model names.
- Added support for gemini/gemini-2.5-flash-lite-preview-06-17 model, by Tamir Zahavi-Brunner.
- /clear now prints “All chat history cleared.” so you know it worked, by Zexin Yuan.
Claude Code
Anthropic's agentic coding tool that reads a codebase, edits files and runs commands from the terminal, with VS Code and JetBrains integrations plus desktop, web and mobile access. It runs Claude models through a Claude subscription, an Anthropic Console API key or supported third-party cloud providers.
Pricing: Included in paid Claude plans: Pro $20/month ($17/month billed annually), Max from $100/month (5x and 20x tiers), Team standard seat $20/seat/month annual ($25 monthly) and premium seat $100 annual ($125 monthly). The Free plan does not include it; pay-as-you-go API credits via a Console account are an alternative.
Latest release 2.1.290:
- Added serverToolUses to the result of a mod's turn.step hook: the tool calls the API ran itself (the advisor), each with its id, name, input, start and end
- Added agentId to the tool.check event of plugin hooks, so a hook can tell a subagent's permission check from the main session's
- Added ceiling to the question and verdict a mod's tool.check hook reads, naming the approval an organization requires for a tool
- Added ThemeKey and Color types to the plugin hooks typings, so an editor lists the theme colors a mod's drawing can name