head to head · open source
pi vs qwen-code
pi has 106,704 GitHub stars, 13,453 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped today. qwen-code has 27,934 stars, 3,059 forks, 1,422 open issues and last shipped today. pi leads on adoption by 282% (106,704 vs 27,934 stars). pi is written in TypeScript under MIT; qwen-code is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. pi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, qwen-code 11%. qwen-code was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| pi | qwen-code | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 107K | ★ 28K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pi if
- You weight community size — 107K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick qwen-code if
- You want the qwen-code feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and qwen-code fits your workflow better
About pi
Pi is a modular agent toolkit written in TypeScript for building and running terminal based AI coding agents. It lives in the developer tooling ecosystem and provides composable packages for LLM integration, agent orchestration, and terminal UI rendering. The project centers on @earendil works/pi coding agent , an interactive CLI agent, supported by core runtime, AI abstraction, and TUI libraries.
About qwen-code
Qwen Code is an open source AI coding agent that runs in the terminal, with additional interfaces for editors, desktop, browser, and chat. It is written in TypeScript and released under the Apache 2.0 license, and it lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem as a development platform for agentic coding. The project is maintained by QwenLM and published on npm as @qwen code/qwen code , with a documentation site hosted at qwenlm.github.io. It ships as a command line tool named qwen that opens an interactive session inside a project directory.
read the full qwen-code overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pi or qwen-code more popular?
pi has 106,704 GitHub stars and qwen-code has 27,934. pi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pi and qwen-code free?
Both are open source. pi is licensed under MIT and qwen-code under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pi and qwen-code?
pi is written in TypeScript and qwen-code in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, pi or qwen-code?
Choose pi if you want the larger community (106,704 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose qwen-code if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.