⚖️ Kilo Code vs Claude Code — Honest Comparison
Both are strong agentic coding tools with terminal and IDE front ends. The real difference is openness vs integration. Kilo is MIT-licensed and model-agnostic, with hundreds of models through one gateway or your own keys. Claude Code is Anthropic's own harness, tuned for Claude models and included in Claude subscriptions.
The previous version called Kilo Apache-2.0, presented Orchestrator mode as a Kilo advantage (it's now deprecated), and used 2026-05 prices and models. Everything below is checked against Kilo's own documentation.
Side by side
| Kilo Code | Claude Code | |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT (source) | Proprietary (public issue tracker and changelog) |
| Surfaces | VS Code, JetBrains, CLI, iOS/Android, Slack, cloud agents | CLI, VS Code and JetBrains extensions, desktop and web apps, Slack |
| Models | Hundreds via the Kilo Gateway; BYOK; 30+ direct providers; local | Claude models (via Anthropic, or Bedrock/Vertex/Foundry for enterprise) |
| How you pay | Free tool; inference at provider rates from credits (5% purchase fee), Kilo Pass from $19/month, or your own keys | Included with Claude Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise plans, or pay-per-token API billing (claude.com/pricing) |
| Instructions file | AGENTS.md (/init creates one) | CLAUDE.md (AGENTS.md when no CLAUDE.md exists, since 2.1.277) |
| Config | kilo.jsonc (global and project) | settings.json (user, project, local) |
| Permissions | allow/ask/deny rules, last match wins; OS sandbox on macOS/Linux | permissions.allow/deny/ask rules; hooks; sandboxing |
| Delegation | Subagents via the task tool; Kilo Swarm; worktrees | Subagents; worktrees |
Pick Kilo Code if…
- you want to choose or mix models, including free and local ones, without changing tools;
- you use several IDEs, or want mobile, Slack and cloud-agent access to the same sessions;
- open source and bring-your-own-key billing matter to you.
Pick Claude Code if…
- you mainly use Claude models and already pay for a Claude plan;
- you want Anthropic's first-party harness, with its hooks, settings and support.
Moving between them
- Claude Code → Kilo: in an empty Kilo session,
/resume-claudeimports one of your 10 most recent Claude Code sessions for that folder, read from~/.claude/projects/. Put project rules inAGENTS.md. - Kilo → Claude Code: Claude Code reads
AGENTS.mdwhen a project has noCLAUDE.md. - Permissions don't carry over. Re-create them in the other tool's format.
Claude Code details: Claude Code settings that actually work. Costs: cost calculator.
Sources: Kilo Code documentation, kilo.ai/pricing and Kilo-Org/kilocode releases (v7.8.1, 2026-09-25). Checked 2026-09-27.
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