open-swe vs SWE-agent
The two are close in size: 10.7k stars for open-swe, 20.3k for SWE-agent. Over the days we have tracked them open-swe moved +7.5% and SWE-agent +4.1%, so open-swe is growing faster right now.
They split the axes: open-swe leads on context depth and customization, SWE-agent on setup ease.
Stars and commit dates come from our own daily tracking. The six axes are read off each project's documentation by our review pipeline, so they describe what a project says about itself, not what we measured in its code.
Where they stand today
Provides pluggable isolated cloud sandboxes and subagent orchestration out of the box for safe, parallelized repo edits and automatic PR creation.
- Stars
- 10.7k
- Tracked growth
- +7.5%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 2h ago
- Language
- Python
- License
- MIT
- Cost to run
- Your API key + cloud sandbox costs
State-of-the-art open-source agent focused on autonomously fixing GitHub issues and offering a specialized EnIGMA mode for offensive cybersecurity, all governed by a single YAML.
- Stars
- 20.3k
- Tracked growth
- +4.1%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 6d ago
- Language
- Python
- License
- MIT
- Cost to run
- Your API key (cloud LMs)
Six axes, head to head
Each axis runs 0 to 5. The label under a score is what that project's own docs claim, not a category average.
| Axis | open-swe | SWE-agent |
|---|---|---|
Context depth How much of your codebase it sees before it answers: the open diff, the diff plus related files, or the whole repository. | ●●●●● Whole-repo access | ●●●●● Diff + related files |
Noise control How it keeps output volume down — severity thresholds, deduplication, incremental runs over new commits only. | ●●●●● Basic filters & middleware | ●●●●● Basic config filters |
Customization How far it bends to your team: custom rules, prompts, style guides, per-path config. | ●●●●● Highly customizable | ●●●●● YAML config |
Privacy Whether your code stays on your own infrastructure: fully local, self-hostable, or cloud API only. | ●●●●● Cloud APIs (your key) | ●●●●● Your API key |
Model freedom Whether you can point it at any provider, or it is wired to one. | ●●●●● Bring-your-own-key | ●●●●● Any BYO model |
Setup ease What it takes to get a first useful run out of it. | ●●●●● Multi-service setup | ●●●●● One-click demo |
Which one to pick
Pick open-swe if…
Customizable architecture — swap sandboxes, models, tools, and middleware to build an internal coding agent that runs each task in an isolated cloud sandbox and opens PRs automatically.
- Context depth: Whole-repo access (5/5 against 3/5)
- Customization: Highly customizable (5/5 against 3/5)
Pick SWE-agent if…
SOTA performance — pick SWE-agent when you want a research-grade, configurable autonomous agent (with an easy Codespaces demo) that can fix repo issues and run security experiments.
- Setup ease: One-click demo (5/5 against 2/5)
What people want from each one
langchain-ai/open-swe
Hacker News: An Open-Source Asynchronous Coding Agent drew 5 points and 0 comments.
SWE-agent/SWE-agent
Hacker News: Princeton group open sources "SWE-agent", with 12% fix rate for GitHub issues drew 307 points and 143 comments.
Questions people ask
Is open-swe better than SWE-agent?
They split the axes: open-swe leads on context depth and customization, SWE-agent on setup ease. open-swe is worth picking when customizable architecture — swap sandboxes, models, tools, and middleware to build an internal coding agent that runs each task in an isolated cloud sandbox and opens PRs automatically.
Which of open-swe and SWE-agent keeps my code private?
open-swe: Cloud APIs (your key) (3/5). SWE-agent: Your API key (3/5).
What does each one cost to run?
open-swe: Your API key + cloud sandbox costs. SWE-agent: Your API key (cloud LMs).
Full profiles: langchain-ai/open-swe and SWE-agent/SWE-agent. Everything else in Autonomous SWE agents.