Claw Code
Ranked 18 of 18 AI coding agents by recommenders
Free coding agent that runs any model and claims around 30% average token savings; critics say it copies Claude Code under a clean-room label.
Free coding agent that runs any model and claims around 30% average token savings; critics say it copies Claude Code under a clean-room label.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Accused of copying Claude Code
“Did a sloppy find and replace for "claude" and made it claw.”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “Claude Code Unpacked : A visual guide” “that's not clean-room, that's copying with extra steps.”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “ClawCode – a Rust rewrite of Claude Code with 100% behavioral parity” “This is theft, plain and simple.”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 on Hacker News - Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “Claw Code – A Full Rewrite of Claude Code in Python”
Other AI coding agents people recommend
The four most recommended other AI coding agents, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | 4,522 | 3,788 | 54% | 13 | 6 mo417 owners | — |
| OpenAI Codex | 2,474 | 1,289 | 66% | 13 | 3 mo165 owners | — |
| OpenCode | 1,060 | 572 | 65% | 13 | 2 mo41 owners | — |
| Gemini CLI | 172 | 321 | 35% | 12 | 3 mo9 owners | — |
| Claw CodeThis page | 6 | 4 | 60% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
11 of the 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I think that's pretty cool”
“claw-coder allows you to run any model in the cloud or on github codespace”
“this approach is powerful but it needs real world validation”
“closed source because we’re testing heavily”
“Now that there is Claw Code, seems like many of these cancellations are easier to do.”
“that's copying with extra steps”
“This is theft, plain and simple.”
“that's not clean-room, that's copying with extra steps.”
“we observed up to 74% token savings, with around 30% on average, without sacrificing quality”
“clout-chasing was the whole point, as evidenced by the Github repo front page going on about "star counts"”
“Did a sloppy find and replace for "claude" and made it claw.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.