head to head · open source
pi vs SWE-agent
pi has 119,586 GitHub stars, 15,353 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SWE-agent has 20,712 stars, 2,264 forks, 102 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. pi leads on adoption by 477% (119,586 vs 20,712 stars). pi is written in TypeScript under MIT; SWE-agent is written in Python under MIT. pi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, SWE-agent 11%. pi 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 | SWE-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 120K | ★ 21K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pi if
- You weight community size — 120K stars and counting
- You want the MIT 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 pi
New issues and PRs from new contributors are auto closed by default. Maintainers review auto closed issues daily. See CONTRIBUTING.md. Pi Agent Harness This is the home of the Pi agent harness project including our self extensible coding agent. @earendil works/pi coding agent : Interactive coding agent CLI @earendil works/pi agent core : Agent runtime with tool calling and state management @earendil works/pi ai : Unified multi provider LLM API (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, …) To learn more about Pi: Visit pi.dev, the project website with demos Read the documentation, but you can also ask the agent to explain…
About SWE-agent
[!warning] Most of our current development effort is on mini swe agent, which has superseded SWE agent. It matches the performance performance of SWE agent, while being much simpler. See the FAQ for more details about the differences. Our general recommendation is to use mini SWE agent instead of SWE agent going forward. SWE agent enables your language model of choice (e.g. GPT 4o or Claude Sonnet 4) to autonomously use tools to fix issues in real GitHub repositories, find cybersecurity vulnerabilities, or perform any custom task. ✅ State of the art on SWE bench among open source projects ✅ Free flowing &…
read the full SWE-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pi or SWE-agent more popular?
pi has 119,586 GitHub stars and SWE-agent has 20,712. pi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pi and SWE-agent free?
Both are open source. pi is licensed under MIT and SWE-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pi and SWE-agent?
pi 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, pi or SWE-agent?
Choose pi if you want the larger community (119,586 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose SWE-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.