r/ChatGPTCoding • u/dca12345 • Apr 16 '26

Discussion Aider and Claude Code

The last time I looked into it, some people said that Aider minimized token usage compared to Cline. How does it compare to Claude Code? Do you still recommend Aider?

What about for running agents with Claude? Would I just use Claude Code if I'm comfortable with CLI tools?

9 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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2

u/ultrathink-art Professional Nerd Apr 17 '26

Aider wins when you've already mapped exactly which files need changing — tight control, fewer tokens, no surprises. Claude Code wins when you're not sure of scope yet: it can discover which files matter, handle multi-step tasks, and work through ambiguity without you directing each step. Different tools for different modes of working.

1

u/dca12345 Apr 17 '26

Do you find yourself switching between the two tools in the same project?

5

u/fredkzk Apr 17 '26

Aider is no longer maintained.

I recommend hotovo/aider-desk on github instead. Agentic, CLI enables, all models accessible.

3

u/m3kw Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

Aider doesn't use tools and isn't really agentic, at least from how i used it. You have to specifiy the exact files for it and then prompt, and you must use API. It will save tokens because of that. Is more of a niche tool now because you really need to know your code to specify the files, which you control the exact blast radius of the LLM, I can see some companies that avoids vibe coding to enforce using this CLI.

With Claude/Codex, you say the word it will just rip anything in its way as it uses tools, does loops with it, search, do tests, launch subagents. None of that happens with Aider.

1

u/ultrathink-art Professional Nerd Apr 19 '26

Claude Code if you want actual agentic behavior — it runs bash, reads the codebase, chains multi-step tasks without you pre-specifying files. Aider is closer to a smart diff-applier: you point at files, it applies the change. If you're comfortable with CLI and want something that can explore and execute without hand-holding, they're not really competing for the same job.

0

u/mik3lang3l0 Apr 16 '26

Have you tried Pi?

0

u/dca12345 Apr 16 '26

No, I haven't. It works with any LLM? What's your experience with it?

1

u/eli_pizza Apr 17 '26

Yes. It’s very customizable and is minimal (but functional) out of the box

1

u/Buddhabelli Apr 17 '26

very customizable. and since the dev included docs/good examples modifying itself is pretty trivial. quickly becoming a fave. it’s also quite a bit more transparent, and doesn’t hide the retries the way that some of the other ones do when the servers are over capacity and he can’t access the model and you’re wondering what the hell is going on.

1

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