Aider vs Crush
A side-by-side comparison of Aider and Crush, two IDE tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Aider | Crush |
|---|---|---|
| Category | IDE | IDE |
| Pricing | BYO KEY | BYO KEY |
| License (differs) | Open source | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Local | Local |
| Platforms (differs) | macOS, Windows, Linux, CLI | CLI, macOS, Linux, Windows |
| Model support | BYO key / model | BYO key / model |
| Vendor (differs) | Paul Gauthier | Charm |
| Capabilities |
|
|
The honest brief
Aider
CLI-only and model-agnostic: auto-commits every AI edit as its own git commit, so changes are trivially revertable.
- Fully open-source, BYO-key
- Auto-commits each edit to git
- Works with any model incl. local
- Strong on its own Polyglot benchmark
- No editor lock-in — pure terminal
- No GUI — terminal comfort required
- You pay model API costs yourself
- Less hand-holding than IDE agents
- Setup/config heavier than hosted tools
Crush
Charm's signature TUI polish over a model-agnostic terminal agent: switch providers mid-session and keep code, keys, and data on your own machine.
- Polished, keyboard-driven terminal UI
- BYO keys for many providers
- LSP-aware code context
- Runs locally; you control keys and data
- Requires your own model API keys
- Beta — some features still missing
- FSL license is not OSI open-source yet
When to pick which
Aider and Crush cover the same capabilities. They differ on license:
- License
- Open source · Proprietary