---
title: Amp
slug: amp
url: "https://toolweight.com/options/amp"
homepage: "https://ampcode.com"
categories: coding-agents
last_verified: 2026-01-15
license: CC-BY-4.0
---

# Amp

> Sourcegraph's opinionated agent with no model picker and an ad-supported free tier.

Amp's defining choice is the absence of a choice: there is no model selector, because Sourcegraph would rather move everyone to whatever is currently best than support a matrix. It runs as a CLI and a VS Code extension with shared, linkable threads, and escalates hard problems to a stronger reasoning subagent. An ad-supported free tier launched in late 2025 alongside pay-as-you-go credits, a genuinely novel, and genuinely divisive, pricing experiment.

## Identity

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Name | Amp |
| Company | Sourcegraph |
| One-liner | Sourcegraph's opinionated agent with no model picker and an ad-supported free tier. |
| Site | https://ampcode.com |
| Open source | No |
| Licence | Proprietary |
| Brand | https://toolweight.com/vendors/Sourcegraph |
| Compared in | 1 |

## Where it is compared

### [Coding agents](https://toolweight.com/compare/coding-agents)
Ranked **#17 of 17** on default weights.
| Field | Value | Confidence | Verified | Source | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Surface | CLI, IDE extension, web | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://ampcode.com | - |
| Default model | Chosen by Amp, there is no model picker | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://ampcode.com | Deliberate: Sourcegraph moves everyone to whatever is currently best. |
| Model breadth | no model choice | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | Multiple vendors are used internally; none are user-selectable. |
| Repo indexing | agentic grep | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Plan mode | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Checkpoint & undo | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Headless / CI | ● | Community-reported | - | - | The CLI supports scripted runs. |
| Local models | ○ | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Where it stops | 3 | Inferred | - | - | Edits and runs commands locally; no first-class PR path. |
| MCP | ● | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Subagents | ● | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | Includes a dedicated higher-reasoning subagent for hard problems. |
| Hooks | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Skills / commands | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Background agents | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Opens PRs | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Permissions | granular allowlist | Inferred | - | - | Command approval settings; no OS sandbox. |
| BYOK | ○ | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Licence | proprietary | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Pricing model | opaque credits | Vendor-claimed | - | https://ampcode.com | Paid use is pay-as-you-go credits with no BYOK escape hatch, which is how you are billed once you are working, so that is what this cell encodes. The ad-supported free tier is real and genuinely novel, but it is the entry ramp rather than the billing model. Harnesses that do offer BYOK, opencode, Cline, Zed, Kilo Code, are encoded as BYOK for the same reason. |
| Entry price | $0 /seat/mo | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | No seat fee, you top up credits, or use the ad-supported tier. |
| Token markup | ● | Inferred | - | - | All tokens are resold; there is no BYOK escape hatch. |
| GitHub stars | - | Unknown | - | - | Closed source. |
| Terminal-Bench | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Bench model | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Positioning | An agentic coding tool that always runs the best model, chosen for you. | Vendor-claimed | - | https://ampcode.com | - |
| First release | 2025-05-01 | Inferred | - | - | Approximate. |

**Verdict.** Removing the model picker is a defensible product decision, most people choose badly and then blame the harness, but it means you control neither cost nor provider, and an ad-supported tier is an odd thing to sit next to a proprietary codebase. Subagent quality is genuinely good.

## Alternatives

- [Aider](https://toolweight.com/options/aider), Minimal terminal pair-programmer with a tree-sitter repo map and automatic git commits.
- [Claude Code](https://toolweight.com/options/claude-code), Anthropic's terminal-first agent, with IDE, web and GitHub Action surfaces.
- [Cline](https://toolweight.com/options/cline), Open-source VS Code and JetBrains agent built around an explicit plan/act split.
- [Codex CLI](https://toolweight.com/options/codex-cli), OpenAI's open-source Rust agent, with the strongest local sandboxing on this page.
- [Cursor](https://toolweight.com/options/cursor), VS Code fork with a real codebase index, background cloud agents and a CLI.
- [Devin](https://toolweight.com/options/devin), Fully delegated cloud engineer: file a task in Slack or the web app, get a PR back.
- [DIY harness](https://toolweight.com/options/diy-harness), Your own loop over a model API with an agent SDK, the build-it-yourself reference point.
- [Gemini CLI](https://toolweight.com/options/gemini-cli), Apache-2.0 terminal agent from Google with an unusually generous free tier.
- [GitHub Copilot (Agent HQ)](https://toolweight.com/options/github-copilot), Copilot's coding agent plus a control plane for running third-party agents on your repos.
- [Goose](https://toolweight.com/options/goose), Block's Apache-2.0 agent, MCP-native from the start, as both a CLI and a desktop app.
- [Grok Build](https://toolweight.com/options/grok-build), xAI's coding harness, launched July 2026, on this page but not yet verified.
- [Kilo Code](https://toolweight.com/options/kilo-code), Open-source VS Code agent in the Cline/Roo lineage, with an orchestrator mode and a CLI.

## Licence and attribution

Data from toolweight (https://toolweight.com), licensed CC-BY-4.0.

- Licence: [CC-BY-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
- Canonical HTML: https://toolweight.com/options/amp
- Machine-readable: https://toolweight.com/options/amp.md · https://toolweight.com/api/v1 · https://toolweight.com/mcp
- toolweight takes no affiliate revenue and sells no placements. Corrections: https://toolweight.com/suggest