---
title: Claude Code
slug: claude-code
url: "https://toolweight.com/options/claude-code"
homepage: "https://claude.com/product/claude-code"
categories: coding-agents
last_verified: 2026-01-15
license: CC-BY-4.0
---

# Claude Code

> Anthropic's terminal-first agent, with IDE, web and GitHub Action surfaces.

Claude Code started as a terminal harness and grew IDE extensions, a hosted web surface and a GitHub Action around the same agent loop. It is deliberately Anthropic-only: no model picker beyond Claude, which lets the loop be tuned tightly against one family's behaviour. The extensibility story, subagents, hooks, skills and MCP, is the most complete of the vendor-coupled harnesses. It is bundled with Pro and Max subscriptions, or metered against an API key including Bedrock and Vertex.

## Identity

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Name | Claude Code |
| Company | Anthropic |
| One-liner | Anthropic's terminal-first agent, with IDE, web and GitHub Action surfaces. |
| Site | https://claude.com/product/claude-code |
| Docs | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/overview |
| Founded | 2025 |
| Open source | No |
| Licence | Proprietary |
| Brand | https://toolweight.com/vendors/Claude |
| Compared in | 1 |

## Where it is compared

### [Coding agents](https://toolweight.com/compare/coding-agents)
Ranked **#2 of 17** on default weights.
| Field | Value | Confidence | Verified | Source | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Surface | CLI, IDE extension, web, GitHub-native | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/overview | - |
| Default model | Latest Claude Opus/Sonnet, switchable with /model | Inferred | - | - | The specific point release rotates every few months; the family is the durable fact. |
| Model breadth | one vendor + custom endpoint | Vendor-claimed | - | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/third-party-integrations | Claude models only, but ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL is a documented path to an LLM gateway or corporate proxy of your choosing, alongside Bedrock and Vertex. The endpoint is yours; the models on the other end are still Anthropic's, which is what separates this tier from multi-vendor. Codex CLI and Qwen Code are graded here on the same rule. |
| Repo indexing | agentic grep | Community-reported | - | - | No embeddings index by design, it searches on demand rather than pre-indexing. |
| Plan mode | ● | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Checkpoint & undo | ● | Community-reported | - | - | Session rewind restores conversation and file state together. |
| Headless / CI | ● | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/sdk | - |
| Local models | ○ | Community-reported | - | - | No documented local-model path. Third-party proxies exist, but this column credits vendor-documented support only, the same rule that keeps Gemini CLI at no and puts GitHub Copilot at partial. |
| Where it stops | 4 | Inferred | - | - | Hosted cloud sessions clone the repo, push a branch and open the pull request with no workflow of yours, and the Claude GitHub App covers the in-repo path. Invoking gh is not what earns this rung, any harness with a shell can do that. With approvals disabled and a privileged token it will merge, but that is you removing the gate, not rung 5 shipping. |
| MCP | ● | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/mcp | - |
| Subagents | ● | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/sub-agents | - |
| Hooks | ● | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/hooks | - |
| Skills / commands | ● | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/slash-commands | - |
| Background agents | ● | Vendor-claimed | - | https://code.claude.com/docs/en/claude-code-on-the-web | Hosted cloud sessions keep running after the browser closes. Backgrounded local tasks do not survive closing the client and are not what earns this cell. |
| Opens PRs | ● | Vendor-claimed | - | https://code.claude.com/docs/en/github-actions | The Claude GitHub App (installed by /install-github-app) pushes and raises PRs under its own identity, and hosted cloud sessions do it with no CI of yours at all. Graded on the App and the hosted runner, not on the ability to shell out to gh. |
| Permissions | allowlist + OS sandbox | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/iam | - |
| BYOK | ● | Inferred | - | - | Point it at your own Anthropic, Bedrock or Vertex account and nothing is disabled or plan-gated, which is what this field asks. That the key can only buy Claude models is a model-breadth fact, scored in that column, counting it twice here would penalise the same limitation once per column. Gemini CLI, equally single-vendor, is graded the same way. |
| Licence | proprietary | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Pricing model | subscription + token overage | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://www.anthropic.com/pricing | - |
| Entry price | $20 /seat/mo | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://www.anthropic.com/pricing | Pro tier; heavy agentic use realistically wants Max. |
| Token markup | ○ | Inferred | - | - | API-key use bills at Anthropic list price. |
| GitHub stars | - | Unknown | - | - | The public repo is an issue tracker rather than the harness source, so a star count would not be comparable to opencode's or Cline's. |
| Terminal-Bench | - | Unknown | - | - | We previously carried 43.2% here. That figure was published for a Claude model running Terminal-Bench 1.0's own reference agent, not for Claude Code, so it was a model result in a harness column and we have removed it. No harness-attributed figure we can stand behind has replaced it. |
| Bench model | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Positioning | Anthropic's coding agent, in your terminal and wherever else you work. | Vendor-claimed | - | https://claude.com/product/claude-code | - |
| First release | 2025-02-24 | Community-reported | - | - | Research preview alongside Claude 3.7 Sonnet. |

**Verdict.** The most complete extensibility surface of any harness here, subagents, hooks, skills and MCP all first-class, at the cost of being locked to one model vendor. If Anthropic's pricing or availability is a business risk for you, that lock is the whole argument against it.

## Alternatives

- [Aider](https://toolweight.com/options/aider), Minimal terminal pair-programmer with a tree-sitter repo map and automatic git commits.
- [Amp](https://toolweight.com/options/amp), Sourcegraph's opinionated agent with no model picker and an ad-supported free tier.
- [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/claude-code
- Machine-readable: https://toolweight.com/options/claude-code.md · https://toolweight.com/api/v1 · https://toolweight.com/mcp
- toolweight takes no affiliate revenue and sells no placements. Corrections: https://toolweight.com/suggest