head to head · open source
pi vs SWE-agent
pi has 106,586 GitHub stars, 13,437 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SWE-agent has 20,344 stars, 2,224 forks, 102 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. pi leads on adoption by 424% (106,586 vs 20,344 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 | ★ 107K | ★ 20K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 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
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 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 pi or SWE-agent more popular?
pi has 106,586 GitHub stars and SWE-agent has 20,344. 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 (106,586 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose SWE-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.