Head-to-head · Cost · Speed · Flexibility

Kepler vs the alternatives

Real benchmarks, real costs. See how Kepler compares to every major coding agent and IDE.

Kepler in action

Sub-agents, tool cards, approval flow, credit tracking — all in your terminal.

~/my-project — mission control

Benchmarks at a glance

AgentSWE-benchCost (300)Per issueBYOKOSS
Kepleryou47.3%$4.14~14sYesYes
Claude Code72.0%~$450~10 minNoNo
Codex CLI69.1%~$250~5 minNoYes
Aider53.0%~$75~3 minYesYes
SWE-agent23.0%~$100~2 minYesYes

SWE-bench Lite · Kepler v2.3 · Updated 2026-07-15

Kepler across models

Same agent. Same harness. Only the model changes.

MetricDeepSeek V4 FlashnowTencent HY3nowGLM 5.2soon
VendorDeepSeekTencent (free)Zhipu
SWE-bench47.3%44.3%
Cost / 300$4.14$0 (free)
Per instance$0.014$0
Cache hit91%93%
Date2026-07-152026-07-15pending

Every model runs the same harness · Docker eval · SWE-bench Lite 300

CLI & IDE feature comparison

FeatureKeplerClaude CodeCodex CLICursorAider
InterfaceCLI + WebCLICLIIDECLI
Model choiceAny (40+)Claude onlyGPT onlyAnyAny
BYOK
MCP servers
Multi-file edits
Auto test + fixPartial
Sub-agents✓ (explore/plan/code)
Visual workflows✓ (Studio)
Scheduled runs✓ (cron)
Web dashboard
Workspace agents
Session memory✓ (cross-session)
Git integration
Sandbox execution✓ (Docker/MicroVM)✓ (cloud)
Self-host
Open source✓ (MIT)
Free tier✓ (50 cr)✓ (BYOK)
Pricing modelCreditsSubscriptionSubscriptionSubscriptionBYOK only

Feature comparison as of 2026-07-15. Competitive features change frequently.

Cost breakdown

Cost
Per-instance cost$0.014$0.25–$1.50
Total SWE-bench run$4.14$75–$450
BYOK pricingYes — any modelLocked to provider
Free tierYes (50 credits)No

The bottom line

Kepler is 100× cheaper than Claude Code for the same SWE-bench workload ($4.14 vs ~$450). You bring your own key and pick the cheapest capable model.

Kepler is the only agent with a full platform — CLI + visual workflows + scheduled automation + domain workspaces. Others are CLI-only.

Kepler is open source and self-hostable. No vendor lock-in, no per-seat pricing, no data leaving your infra.

Try Kepler

50 free credits. BYOK for unlimited.

npm i -g @axplusb/keplerWeb app