The deciding difference is operational: Prime Agent can run on infrastructure you control, Claude Agent SDK cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered.
The Claude Code loop as a library, for agents that are not about code.
Same harness as Claude Code, but you own the entrypoint and the tool surface.
Prime Intellect's recursive-language-model harness — a persistent IPython kernel is the only tool, sub-agents are function calls.
Drops fixed tool schemas and context compaction: the agent writes programs over its own context, and can CRUD its own prompts, skills and sub-agents mid-run.
| Claude Agent SDK | Prime Agent | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary | Open source |
| Pricing | usage based | open source |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes |
| Languages | TypeScript, Python | Any language |
| Install | npm install @anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk | curl -fsSL https://app.primeintellect.ai/prime-agent/install.sh | sh |
| Keys required | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | None |
The deciding difference is operational: Prime Agent can run on infrastructure you control, Claude Agent SDK cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered. Claude Agent SDK: The Claude Code loop as a library, for agents that are not about code. Prime Agent: Prime Intellect's recursive-language-model harness — a persistent IPython kernel is the only tool, sub-agents are function calls.
Claude Agent SDK is a hosted service only. Prime Agent can run on your own infrastructure.
Claude Agent SDK is proprietary (usage based). Prime Agent is open source (open source).
Every page here answers to Accept: text/markdown and returns the same content at roughly a tenth the tokens. No separate site, no toggle — same URL.
curl -s -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://newagent.build/compare/claude-agent-sdk-vs-prime-agent