Aider vs Amp

Pick two tools from the same category to compare side-by-side.

	Aider OSS AI pair programmer for the terminal; multi-model, git-native.	Amp Frontier coding agent originally built at Sourcegraph, now developed by the independent Amp Frontier Corporation.
Category	harness	harness
Vendor type	open source	commercial
Pricing	free	usage
Strengths	+ Fully open source + Multi-model (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, local) + Git-native commit-per-change workflow	+ Multi-surface workflow across CLI, editor plugins, web, and mobile remote control + Pay-as-you-go pricing with no markup for individual users + Extensible via plugins and MCP servers + Independent, self-described profitable company focused solely on the agent
Tradeoffs	− Less polished than IDE-based harnesses − No managed plugin ecosystem	− Closed source, unlike terminal-agent alternatives such as OpenCode or Aider − Opinionated model selection managed by Amp rather than freely user-configured − Fast-changing product and branding (recently consolidated Amp Neo back into Amp)
Used in stacks	1	0