Both are commercial harness options with comparable terms, so the choice comes down to which model of the problem you prefer — compare the descriptions below rather than the licence.
Anthropic's coding agent — terminal, IDE and SDK, with hooks, skills and MCP built in.
Configure via .claude/settings.json; drop reusable procedures in .claude/skills/.
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.
| Claude Code | Claude Agent SDK | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Pricing | paid | usage based |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| Languages | Any language | TypeScript, Python |
| Install | npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code | npm install @anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk |
| Keys required | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY |
Both are commercial harness options with comparable terms, so the choice comes down to which model of the problem you prefer — compare the descriptions below rather than the licence. Claude Code: Anthropic's coding agent — terminal, IDE and SDK, with hooks, skills and MCP built in. Claude Agent SDK: The Claude Code loop as a library, for agents that are not about code.
Claude Code is a hosted service only. Claude Agent SDK is a hosted service only.
Claude Code is proprietary (paid). Claude Agent SDK is proprietary (usage based).
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-code-vs-claude-agent-sdk