Claude Code vs Pi
Claude Code (Anthropic) and Pi (Earendil Inc. (created by Mario Zechner)) side by side on public data, as of Oct 6, 2026.
Claude Code has 2.8x the weekly package downloads of Pi (14.8M against 5.2M). Claude Code has 1.3x the GitHub stars of Pi (150K against 113K). Over the last 30 days downloads moved -36% for Claude Code and +52% for Pi. Claude Code shipped 74 stable releases in the past 90 days. Pi shipped 30 stable releases in the past 90 days.
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | Claude Code | Pi |
|---|---|---|
| Pulse Score | 80 | 75 |
| Overall rank | #3 | #5 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | 14.8M | 5.2M |
| Downloads, 7-day change | up 11.6% | up 29.8% |
| Downloads, 30-day change | down 36.4% | up 52.1% |
| VS Code installs | 27.1M | — |
| Marketplace rating | 3.7 / 5 (894) | — |
| GitHub stars | 150K | 113K |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | 28.3K | 6,611 |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 1,350 | 50 |
| Latest stable release | 2.1.290 · yesterday | 1.0.4 · yesterday |
| Stable releases, 90 days | 74 | 30 |
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | 57.9% · v4.0 | — |
| Price | $20/mo | Free (OSS) |
| License | Proprietary | MIT |
| First released | February 2025 | November 2025 |
| Interfaces | CLI, IDE extension, Desktop, Web, Mobile, SDK | CLI, SDK |
| Models | Anthropic Claude models via Claude plans, a Console API key or supported third-party cloud providers | 15+ providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Azure, Bedrock, Mistral, Groq, xAI, OpenRouter, Ollama and more) via API keys or OAuth |
Trends
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
Pi
Minimal, extensible open-source coding agent harness with interactive TUI, print/JSON, RPC and SDK modes, created by Mario Zechner and now maintained by Earendil Inc. It supports 15+ model providers through API keys or OAuth and is customized with TypeScript extensions, skills and packages.
Pricing: Free and MIT-licensed; costs are those of the chosen model provider. Pi Durable (experimental) is also free per the 1.0 announcement.
Latest release 1.0.4:
- Tool patterns and --no-mcp: --tools and --exclude-tools accept patterns, for example --tools read,codemode,'mcpradius' keeps only one MCP server's tools. --tools now keeps MCP tools unless an…
- Codemode persists images: tools.read() on an image file now gives back an image block that image() can show. See Call tools.
- Added patterns to --tools and --exclude-tools, for example --tools read,codemode,'mcpradius'
- Added --no-mcp to disable the built-in MCP support for one run