Rating4.3 Freshly squeezed
Platforms
Mac, Windows, Linux
Free
Free: chat only
Pro
Pro $20, Max $100+
People ask me: "Wouter, what tool did you use to become the Grand King of Coding, Lord of the Repositories, Slayer of Bugs, famous in all 12 Provinces?"
I tell them to pull up a chair whilst I regale the tale of Claude Code. It's the best frontier model out there, builds what you (the untrained squire) tell it to build in plain English.
You can now become a coding wizard yourself.
What it does
Claude Code runs in your terminal and as a desktop app. You tell it what you want in plain English, and it reads your codebase, writes the code, runs it, and fixes its own mistakes.
It works across your whole project, not one file at a time. It can search, edit dozens of files, run tests, use git, and reach into your other tools. You stay in the loop and approve the steps that matter.
Underneath it's Claude, Anthropic's most capable model. It plans before it types, explains what it's doing, and asks before anything destructive. Less autocomplete, more junior developer who actually reads the docs.
Why I use it every day
I run One Man Agency. I'm not a career engineer, but I ship real software: websites, tools, automations. Claude Code is how a team of one keeps up with a team of ten.
It turned coding from a bottleneck into the fun part.
I describe a feature and it scaffolds the whole thing. I paste an error and it traces the cause and fixes it. I ask for a refactor and it does it across the project without breaking things.
The desktop app makes it frictionless. No setup rituals, no copy-pasting between a chat window and my editor. I think out loud, it builds, I review.
The good stuff
- It's the best model, full stop. For real coding work, Claude gets there faster and with fewer mistakes than anything else I've tried.
- It handles whole projects. It reads your codebase, edits many files at once, runs the code, and checks its own work. Finished features, not snippets.
- It's dummy-proof. Plain English in, working software out. You don't need to be an engineer to get a lot done.
- It fits how you already work. Terminal, desktop app, your editor, git, MCP tools. No need to change your setup.
Where it falls short
It's not perfect, and it's not cheap.
- Max is expensive. To really lean on it you'll want the Max plan, and that runs about $100 to $200 a month. Worth it for me, but it's a real number.
- It can over-engineer. Left unchecked it sometimes writes more code than the job needs. You have to steer it.
- It's confident when it's wrong. Most of the time it's right, but it will occasionally insist on a broken approach. You still have to review what it ships.
- It leans on context. On a messy or undocumented codebase it guesses more. The cleaner your project, the better it performs.
If you only code now and then, the Max plan is hard to justify. Start on Pro and see how far it gets you.
Who it's for
- Founders and solo builders who ship their own software
- Developers who want to move faster without babysitting autocomplete
- Non-engineers who can describe what they want clearly
- Anyone maintaining a codebase too big to hold in their head
- People who'd rather review code than write every line of it
Who it's NOT for
- Hobby coders who can't justify the Max price
- Teams with strict policies against AI-written code
- Purists who want to type every character themselves
The verdict
I've used Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT, and a stack of others. They're all fine. Claude Code is the one that actually finishes the job instead of handing me a half-built suggestion.
The Max plan stings every month. It occasionally over-builds. You can't switch your brain off.
But it made me dramatically faster, and it made coding fun again. For me that's an easy trade.
What AI coding tool should I use as a
 |  | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| 5 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 |
| 3 | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Free | $3/mo | $20/mo | $20/mo |
| 4.3 | 4.1 | 3.8 | 3.8 |
Hover or tap a cell for the why behind each score.
4.3
The best coding tool I've ever used. Nothing else is close.
You can try Claude on the free tier, but for real coding you'll want Pro at $20/month, or Max if you live in it.