head to head · open source
Continue vs SWE-agent
Continue has 35,946 GitHub stars, 5,395 forks, 951 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. SWE-agent has 20,344 stars, 2,224 forks, 102 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Continue leads on adoption by 77% (35,946 vs 20,344 stars). Continue is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; SWE-agent is written in Python under MIT. Continue has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, SWE-agent 11%. Continue was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (agent, ai, developer-tools), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Continue | SWE-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 20K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Continue if
- You weight community size — 36K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick SWE-agent if
- You want the SWE-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and SWE-agent fits your workflow better
About Continue
Continue is an open source coding agent designed to assist developers directly within their IDE or terminal. It operates as a CLI tool, VS Code extension, and JetBrains plugin, enabling natural language interaction with codebases to generate, edit, and explain code. The project lives in the AI assisted developer tools ecosystem and is built with TypeScript under the Apache 2.0 license.
read the full Continue overview →
About SWE-agent
SWE agent is a Python, MIT licensed open source project in the AI assisted coding and agent ecosystem. It is an agent based model for developer tools that takes a GitHub issue and tries to automatically fix it using a chosen language model. The project is associated with NeurIPS 2024 and is maintained by researchers from Princeton University and Stanford University.
read the full SWE-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Continue or SWE-agent more popular?
Continue has 35,946 GitHub stars and SWE-agent has 20,344. Continue has the larger community by that measure.
Are Continue and SWE-agent free?
Both are open source. Continue is licensed under Apache-2.0 and SWE-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Continue and SWE-agent?
Continue is written in TypeScript and SWE-agent in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Continue or SWE-agent?
Choose Continue if you want the larger community (35,946 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose SWE-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.