Amp vs Qwen Code (2026): Which Vibe Coding App Is Better?

Both are popular terminal coding agents. Here is how Amp and Qwen Code stack up on price, strengths and weaknesses, and which one we would pick.

Amp

Frontier coding agent for the terminal and editor, from the makers of Sourcegraph

8.2 /10

Pricing: Free plan, paid from $20/mo

Pros

Strong results on hard, multi-step tasks
Shared threads for team review
Subagents and AGENTS.md built in

Cons

Usage-based costs add up on large tasks
Fewer configuration knobs by design

Visit Amp ↗

Qwen Code

Open-source AI coding agent from Alibaba's Qwen team, for terminal, IDE and desktop

8.0 /10

Pricing: Open source

Pros

Official, well-funded project from Alibaba's Qwen team with transparent benchmark results
Multi-protocol model support (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Qwen) avoids vendor lock-in
First-class IDE plugins for VS Code, JetBrains and Zed, not just a terminal CLI

Cons

"Agentic out of the box" features like Auto-Memory/Auto-Skills need review for what data they retain
Best results likely come from pairing it with Qwen's own models rather than third-party ones

Visit Qwen Code ↗

Amp vs Qwen Code at a glance

	Amp	Qwen Code
Editor score	8.2 / 10	8.0 / 10
Pricing model	Freemium	Open source
Starting price	$20/mo	Free
Reader upvotes	0	0
Best for	terminal, agent	qwen, terminal-agent, multi-model
Agent Skills support	Yes	No
Subagents support	Yes	No
MCP support	Yes	No
AGENTS.md support	Yes	No
Plugins support	Yes	No
Hooks support	No	No
Rules support	No	No
Agent skills in this directory	47	0
Subagents & agents in this directory	9	3
MCP servers in this directory	72	0

Our pick

Amp edges it with a score of 8.2 versus 8.0. Amp is the better fit if you value: strong results on hard, multi-step tasks, shared threads for team review. Choose Qwen Code instead if you need: official, well-funded project from alibaba's qwen team with transparent benchmark results, multi-protocol model support (openai, anthropic, gemini, qwen) avoids vendor lock-in.