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

Both are popular terminal coding agents. Here is how Amp and Whip 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 ↗

Whip

Single-binary Go terminal coding agent tuned for open-source and OpenAI-compatible models

6.5 /10

Pricing: Open source

Pros

Single static binary, no runtime dependencies to install
Provider-agnostic: works with OpenRouter, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or a Codex subscription
Built-in MCP support and background subagents for concurrent work

Cons

Young, niche project with a small contributor base compared to established terminal agents
Documentation is still thin outside the README/docs folder

Visit Whip ↗

Amp vs Whip at a glance

	Amp	Whip
Editor score	8.2 / 10	6.5 / 10
Pricing model	Freemium	Open source
Starting price	$20/mo	Free
Reader upvotes	0	0
Best for	terminal, agent	terminal, go, open-source-models
Agent Skills support	Yes	No
Subagents support	Yes	Yes
MCP support	Yes	Yes
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	5
MCP servers in this directory	72	72

Our pick

Amp edges it with a score of 8.2 versus 6.5. Amp is the better fit if you value: strong results on hard, multi-step tasks, shared threads for team review. Choose Whip instead if you need: single static binary, no runtime dependencies to install, provider-agnostic: works with openrouter, any openai-compatible endpoint, or a codex subscription.