LoopervsSWE-agent
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Looper
nexu-io · Autonomous SWE
#216OSS
Panel
5.61 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.5
- Usefulness
- 5.8
- Cost
- 6.2
- Longevity
- 4.8
“It only picks up issues that are both assigned and labelled, a bar most backlogs have never once cleared.”
SWE-agent
Princeton University and Stanford University · Autonomous SWE
#144OSS
Panel
5.13 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.5
- Usefulness
- 4.8
- Cost
- 6.5
- Longevity
- 3.7
“Maintenance-only and superseded by a version with mini in the name, which is the most honest changelog on this board.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Looper | SWE-agent |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Autonomous SWE | Autonomous SWE |
| Runs | local | local, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos, linux | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | Yes |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | No |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | multiple providers | Claude, GPT, any LiteLLM-supported model |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | No | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 128 | 20,455 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Looper | SWE-agent | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 5.5 | 5.0 | Looper — Pick this if your backlog is full of small, well-specified issues; pick a supervised terminal agent if your tickets need a conversation before they need code. |
| El Crítico | 4.3 | 4.8 | SWE-agent — Maintenance-only by the maintainers' own statement, so what you are evaluating is a research artifact whose fixes now go to its successor. |
| El Profesor | 6.3 | 5.8 | Looper — The forge is designated the source of truth and the planner emits a spec pull request before code, so the intermediate artefact is a reviewable document rather than hidden state. |
| La Inversora | 5.0 | 4.0 | Looper — A hundred and thirteen stars and no company, entering the one segment where the competitors are venture-funded and sell the same promise with a support contract. |
| La Jefa | 5.3 | 3.8 | Looper — No seat cost across sixty engineers, and it runs as a daemon on infrastructure we own, which means it needs a service account with commit rights to our repositories. |
| El Hacker | 7.3 | 7.5 | SWE-agent — MIT, Docker-sandboxed, any LiteLLM model including my local server, and every prompt in the repo; maintenance-only just means the code stops changing under me. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.