I’ve been following the LLM race closely, especially for coding assistants.
Claude Code was my go-to for a while, but I just read about Qwen’s new release, and it looks like a serious contender.
Anyone here tried it yet?
Do you think it can actually replace Claude for real-world coding tasks?
For context, here’s the article that got me thinking:
Did Qwen Just Release the Best Alternative to Claude Code?
Would love to hear devs’ takes on this.
Qwen has been pretty impressive overall since version 2.5, considering its model size, but I think it still can’t match Claude in terms of pure coding performance…
I think the fact that open models, including Qwen, can be run completely locally (depending on the GPU) is an advantage, though…
You would still have to pay to use the APIs, right? Hosting locally would require tremendous power
You’re absolutely right on both counts!
Yes, for API usage, there would still be costs. The game then becomes comparing Qwen’s pricing model and performance to Claude’s for real-world tasks to see which offers better value.
As for local hosting, you hit the nail on the head for the larger models (like the 32B version of Qwen 2.5 Coder) – they do require significant power. However, Qwen also offers smaller, more runnable models (e.g., 1.5B, 7B parameters) that can be surprisingly feasible on consumer hardware, especially with quantization.
It really highlights that ‘best’ isn’t just about raw performance, but also accessibility and cost for different use cases.
I came across some posts that might be helpful.