Alternatives#
The AI-assisted development space is rapidly evolving, with many projects emerging and rapidly improving. Here, we’ll provide an overview of gptme and some similar projects that might be good alternatives (or vice versa) for your use case, highlighting their key features to help you understand the landscape.
When selecting an AI-assisted development tool, consider the following factors:
Your preferred working environment (terminal, IDE, etc.)
The specific tasks you need assistance with
Integration with your existing workflow
The level of control and customization you require
Each of these projects has its own strengths and may be better suited for different use cases. We encourage you to explore them and find the one that best fits your needs.
If your answers to these questions are “terminal”, “general-purpose/coding”, “extensible”, and “highly customizable”, gptme might be the right choice for you.
Remember that the AI-assisted development space is rapidly evolving, and these tools are continuously improving and adding new features. Always check the latest documentation and releases for the most up-to-date information.
Let’s start with the comparison, we will first show an overview comparison and then dig deeper into each alternative.
Comparison#
While we obviously like gptme, there are other great projects in the AI-assisted development space that provide similar but different capabilities, which be more what you are looking for.
Here we will briefly introduce some we like, along with their key features.
Type |
Focus |
Price |
Open Source |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
gptme |
CLI |
General purpose |
Free |
✅ |
Open Interpreter |
CLI |
General purpose |
Free |
✅ |
Aider |
CLI |
Coding |
Free |
✅ |
Moatless Tools |
CLI |
Coding |
Free |
✅ |
OpenHands |
CLI/Web |
General purpose |
Free |
✅ |
Lovable.dev |
Web app |
Frontend |
Credits |
❌ |
Cursor |
IDE fork |
Coding |
$20/mo |
❌ |
Claude Desktop |
Desktop app |
General purpose |
$20/mo |
❌ |
Claude Projects |
Web app |
Chat with files |
$20/mo |
❌ |
Projects#
To begin, lets first introduce gptme and then we will compare it to some of the other projects in the space.
gptme#
gptme is a personal AI assistant that runs in your terminal, designed to assist with various programming tasks and knowledge work.
Key features:
Runs in the terminal
Can execute shell commands and Python code
Ability to read, write, and patch files
Web browsing capabilities
Vision support for images and screenshots
Self-correcting behavior
Support for multiple LLM providers
Extensible tool system
Highly customizable, aims to be simple to modify
First commit: March 24, 2023.
Aider#
Aider is AI pair programming in your terminal.
Key features:
Git integration
Code editing capabilities
Conversation history
Customizable prompts
Scores highly on SWE-Bench
Differences to gptme:
gptme is less git-commit focused
gptme is more general-purpose?
gptme has wider array of tools?
First commit: April 4, 2023.
Moatless Tools#
Moatless Tools is an impressive AI coding agent that has performed really well on SWE-Bench.
Key features:
Various specialized tools for different tasks
Integration with popular development environments
Focus on specific development workflows
Scores highly on SWE-Bench
OpenHands#
OpenHands (formerly OpenDevin) is a leading open-source platform for software development agents, with impressive performance on benchmarks and a large community.
Key features:
Leading performance on SWE-bench (>50% score)
Can do anything a human developer can: write code, run commands, browse web
Support for multiple LLM providers
Both CLI and web interface
Docker-based sandboxed execution
Active development and large community (46.9k stars)
Differences to gptme:
More focused on software development
Has web UI in addition to CLI
Larger community and more active development
Docker-based sandboxing vs gptme’s direct execution
First commit: March 13, 2024.
Lovable.dev#
lovable.dev (previously GPT Engineer.app) lets you build webapps fast using natural language.
Key features:
Builds frontends with ease, just by prompting
LLM-powered no-code editor for frontends
Git/GitHub integration, ability to import projects
Supabase integration for backend support
Differences to gptme:
gptme is terminal-only (for now)
gptme is much more general-purpose
gptme is far from low/no-code
gptme is far from as good at building frontends
gptme is not no-code, you still need to select your context yourself
Disclaimer: gptme author Erik was an early hire at Lovable.
Cursor#
If you are a VSCode user who doesn’t mind using a fork, this seems to be it.
Differences to gptme:
gptme is in-terminal instead of in-vscode-fork
gptme is extensible with tools, more general-purpose - Less true now that Cursor supports MCP
Claude#
Anthropic’s Claude has gotten popular due to its excellent coding capabilities. It has also championed MCP as a way to extend its capabilities and solve the n-to-m problem of tool clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor) and servers (browser, shell, python).
Projects
Claude Projects lets users upload their files and chat with them. It requires a Claude subscription.
Released Jun 25, 2024.
Artifacts
Claude Artifacts allows users to directly preview certain content, like HTML and React components, allowing to build small web apps with Claude.
It is like a mini-version of Lovable.dev.
Released Aug 27, 2024.
Desktop
Claude Desktop is a desktop client for Claude.
It supports MCP, allowing for a wide array of tools and resources to be used with it. (gptme also intends to support MCP)
Released October 31st, 2024.
Code
Claude Code is a “is an agentic coding tool that lives in your terminal, understands your codebase, and helps you code faster through natural language commands”.
It is pretty much a full-on clone of gptme, with MCP support. Unlike gptme, it is not open-source (and they have no such plans.
We have not made a thorough comparison yet. While users we asked have said they still prefer gptme, they acknowledge Claude Code has certain advantages which gptme could learn from.
Released February 24, 2025.
ChatGPT#
Code Interpreter
ChatGPT’s Code Interpreter was one of the early inspirations for gptme as an open-source and local-first alternative, giving the LLM access to your terminal and local files.
There’s not much to compare here anymore, as gptme has evolved a lot since then (while Code Interpreter hasn’t), but it’s worth mentioning as it was one of the first projects in this space.
Released July 6, 2023.
Canvas
ChatGPT Canvas was OpenAI’s response to Claude Artifacts (released ~1 month before).
Released October 3, 2024.