Crush vs Qwen Code
A side-by-side comparison of Crush and Qwen Code, two IDE tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Crush | Qwen Code |
|---|---|---|
| Category | IDE | IDE |
| Pricing (differs) | BYO KEY | FREEMIUM |
| License (differs) | Proprietary | Open core |
| Deployment | Local | Local |
| Platforms (differs) | CLI, macOS, Linux, Windows | CLI |
| Model support (differs) | BYO key / model | Multi-model |
| Vendor (differs) | Charm | Alibaba |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
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
Qwen Code
Parser and prompts tuned for Qwen3-Coder, with a free Qwen OAuth tier and native multi-provider support out of the box.
- Apache-2.0 and free to run
- Interactive or headless terminal UI
- Multi-provider + local models
- Agentic: subagents, MCP, memory
- Best results need Qwen models
- Younger than Gemini CLI upstream
- Terminal-only workflow
When to pick which
Across the signals we compare, Crush and Qwen Code differ on pricing, license, platforms, and model support:
- Pricing
- BYO KEY · FREEMIUM
- License
- Proprietary · Open core
- Platforms
- CLI, macOS, Linux, Windows · CLI
- Model support
- BYO key / model · Multi-model
Their capability lists differ in recorded depth — compare the full lists above before deciding.