People look for GitHub Copilot alternatives for three reasons: the move to credit-based billing makes monthly cost harder to predict, individual-plan interaction data can be used for model training unless you opt out, and teams that live in one editor or terminal want an assistant built around that surface. They move to agent-first editors, terminal agents, or open-source tools that run on their own model keys.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderShort answer: The closest replacements for GitHub Copilot in our AI coding assistants ranking are Cursor, Claude Code and JetBrains AI Assistant. Choose Cursor if you want the agent to be the main way of working and accept moving your team to Cursor. All 12 alternatives below are ranked products from Best AI Coding Assistants in 2026, and each says where it differs from GitHub Copilot.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this site; it never changes what we say about a product. How that works.
Copilot's documentation now describes premium-request billing as legacy (Pro had 300 requests, Pro+ 1,500, extra requests at $0.04 each). Current plans carry GitHub AI Credits instead: Pro lists 1,500, Business 1,900 per user and Enterprise 3,900 per user, with usage beyond the pool charged at $0.01 per credit. Inline completions stay unlimited on paid tiers, but chat and agent work now draws from a pool that is harder to forecast per developer.
GitHub's Copilot page says that from 24 April it may use interactions from Copilot Free, Pro and Pro+ users (inputs, outputs, code snippets and context) to train its models unless the user has opted out. The notice names those three tiers, not Business or Enterprise. A freelancer or small firm on a personal plan carries a setting to check that an organisation seat does not.
GitHub's own FAQ lists extensions for Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Vim, Neovim, the JetBrains IDEs and Azure Data Studio, but says chat is available only in Visual Studio Code, JetBrains and Visual Studio. Developers in Vim or Neovim get completions without the conversational side, which is what pushes them towards terminal agents.
| Alternative | Headquarters | Free option | Pricing | Key difference | Switch if | Our rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor | United States | Yes | Free Hobby plan; per user per month plus on-demand usage, published | AI editor and agent, now a SpaceX company with in-house models | you want the agent to be the main way of working and accept moving your team to Cursor | #9 |
| Claude Code | United States | No free tier | Per seat per month on Claude plans, published; or pay-as-you-go API usage | Anthropic's coding agent for terminal, IDE, desktop and browser | you hand whole tasks to an agent and already pay for a Claude plan | #8 |
| JetBrains AI Assistant | Netherlands | Yes | Free tier with monthly credits; per user per month, published | AI inside JetBrains IDEs, metered in credits worth one dollar | your team works in IntelliJ, PyCharm or another JetBrains IDE all day | #7 |
| OpenAI Codex | Not stated by the vendor | Yes | Free plan with limited use; ChatGPT plans per user per month, published | OpenAI's coding agent, bundled into ChatGPT plans across CLI and cloud | your organisation already buys ChatGPT seats and wants coding in the same plan | #11 |
| Amazon Q Developer | United States | Yes | Free tier; Pro per user per month, published | AWS's assistant, with its IDE plugins scheduled to lose support | you need AWS-centred help today and can move again within two years | #13 |
| Zed | United States | Yes | Free Personal plan; Pro and Business per seat per month, published | A GPL-licensed editor that treats the model as a swappable part | you want a fast open-source editor and to pay for models at list price | #1 |
| Cline | United States | Yes | Free extension and CLI with inference at cost or own keys; Enterprise quoted | Apache-licensed coding agent that asks before every edit and command | you want to choose the model and pay no seat fee | #2 |
| Kilo Code | United States | Yes | Free extensions with usage billed at provider rates; Teams per user per month, published | MIT-licensed agent for VS Code, JetBrains and the command line | you want one open tool across VS Code and JetBrains and low seat cost | #4 |
| Aider | Not stated by the vendor | Yes | Free; you pay your chosen model provider directly | Terminal pair programmer that commits each change to git | you work in the terminal and want every change as a reviewable git commit | #5 |
| Augment Code | United States | No free tier | Flat monthly plan per organisation plus usage top-ups, published | Flat plan per organisation, with a service fee on model usage | a small team wants a shared usage pool and a firm no-training statement | #6 |
| Devin | United States | Yes | Free plan; Teams base fee plus per seat per month, published | Cognition's agent with a desktop IDE, CLI and cloud sessions | you want to delegate tickets to an agent and review the result | #10 |
| Amp | United States | Yes | Free Hobby plan; Individual subscription and pay-as-you-go credits, published | Agent for web, desktop and terminal, billed at provider token prices | you want agents that keep running remotely and to bring your own model access | #3 |
United States · Free Hobby plan; per user per month plus on-demand usage, published
Cursor is sold around agent requests and Composer access, with limited agent requests on a free Hobby plan and $40 per user per month on Teams. Every plan includes base model usage, with on-demand billing beyond the included amount. Teams adds SAML/OIDC single sign-on and shared billing.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you want the agent to be the main way of working and accept moving your team to Cursor.
United States · Per seat per month on Claude plans, published; or pay-as-you-go API usage
Claude Code is Anthropic's agent and is included in the Claude Pro plan ($17 a month billed annually, $20 monthly) and in Team seats ($20 a seat billed annually, Premium seats $100). It works from tasks and a repository rather than from inline suggestions, and Copilot's tab completion has no equivalent here.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you hand whole tasks to an agent and already pay for a Claude plan.
Netherlands · Free tier with monthly credits; per user per month, published
JetBrains sells AI inside its own IDEs. Individual prices are AI Free (3 credits per 30 days), AI Pro $10 (10 credits) and AI Ultimate $30 (35 credits), each credit worth $1; organisations pay $20 and $60. It is tied to JetBrains products, whereas Copilot also covers Visual Studio Code.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if your team works in IntelliJ, PyCharm or another JetBrains IDE all day.
JetBrains AI Assistant, #7 of 13 in our AI coding assistants ranking →
Not stated by the vendor · Free plan with limited use; ChatGPT plans per user per month, published
Codex is included in ChatGPT plans (Free, Go at $8, Business at $20 per user billed annually) and can also run from the CLI, SDK or IDE extension on an API key paid at API rates. Usage is shared with the ChatGPT plan, so the budget is one pool rather than a separate coding subscription.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if your organisation already buys ChatGPT seats and wants coding in the same plan.
OpenAI Codex, #11 of 13 in our AI coding assistants ranking →
United States · Free tier; Pro per user per month, published
Amazon Q Developer has a free tier with 50 agentic requests a month and a Pro tier at $19 per user per month, with Java transformation quota and IP indemnity. AWS has announced it will end support for the IDE plugins on 30 April 2027 and points users to Kiro, so treat it as a short-term choice.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you need AWS-centred help today and can move again within two years.
Amazon Q Developer, #13 of 13 in our AI coding assistants ranking →
United States · Free Personal plan; Pro and Business per seat per month, published
Zed is a code editor licensed GPL-3.0-or-later, built by Zed Industries in the United States. Personal is free with unlimited use of your own API keys. Pro costs $10 a month with $5 of token credit, billed beyond that at API list price plus 10 percent, and Business is $30 per seat.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you want a fast open-source editor and to pay for models at list price.
United States · Free extension and CLI with inference at cost or own keys; Enterprise quoted
Cline is an Apache-2.0 licensed agent for VS Code and a CLI, with no subscription for individuals. You pay only for model inference, either with your own keys (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock and others) or through Cline at cost. Enterprise adds SSO, SLA and a JetBrains extension at a quoted price.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you want to choose the model and pay no seat fee.
United States · Free extensions with usage billed at provider rates; Teams per user per month, published
Kilo Code is MIT licensed, with extensions for VS Code and JetBrains plus a CLI, and gives access to more than 500 models. Platform use is free; Teams costs $15 per user per month. Inference is billed separately at provider rates, through Kilo Pass credits, or with your own keys.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you want one open tool across VS Code and JetBrains and low seat cost.
Not stated by the vendor · Free; you pay your chosen model provider directly
Aider is an Apache-2.0 terminal tool that edits files in your repository and commits each change to git with a message. It has no vendor plan or hosting: you connect any model from Claude, OpenAI or DeepSeek to local models and pay the provider directly. It has no editor interface or team administration.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you work in the terminal and want every change as a reviewable git commit.
United States · Flat monthly plan per organisation plus usage top-ups, published
Augment Code prices by pooled usage, not by seat: Standard is $20 a month and Business $100 a month, shared across up to 50 seats, with top-ups valid for 12 months. All paid plans include its Context Engine, CLI and agents, and state that data is not used for AI training.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if a small team wants a shared usage pool and a firm no-training statement.
Augment Code, #6 of 13 in our AI coding assistants ranking →
United States · Free plan; Teams base fee plus per seat per month, published
Devin is an agent that takes whole tasks in its own cloud environment. It has a free plan, Pro at $20 a month, Max at $200, and Teams at $80 a month base plus $40 per developer seat, with overage at API rates. It is not an inline completion tool and does not replace Copilot's tab suggestions.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you want to delegate tickets to an agent and review the result.
United States · Free Hobby plan; Individual subscription and pay-as-you-go credits, published
Amp is a coding agent that runs in cloud environments it calls orbs. The Hobby plan is free, Individual costs $20 a month with 45,000 orb minutes, and Teams has no extra charge. It states there are no Amp token fees and lets you use your own keys or other subscriptions, such as ChatGPT.
Switch from GitHub Copilot if you want agents that keep running remotely and to bring your own model access.
Copilot stays the right choice when the code already lives on GitHub and the organisation wants one vendor for pull requests, code review, policy and the assistant. Business at $19 and Enterprise at $39 per seat give licence management, policy controls and IP indemnity that the independent tools mostly leave to you. Unlimited completions on paid plans, and a seat that works across Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio and JetBrains, also suit mixed teams better than a single-editor product. If your usage fits inside the credit pool, the bill is predictable enough.
Credit-based plans reward measurement. Run the replacement for a month and record what each developer actually consumes, because agent tasks use far more than completions. At a per-seat plan such as Copilot Business the cost is flat until the pool runs out, at pooled or bring-your-own-key tools it follows usage.
Copilot's content exclusion rules, custom instructions and organisation policies are configured in GitHub. Expect to rewrite them in the new tool's own format, and check how it handles files you must keep out of a model's context before anyone switches on an agent.
Copilot and most alternatives can coexist in one editor or terminal. Keep the existing seats until the new tool has covered a full sprint of reviews and merges, then cancel at the end of the billing month so no one is left without completions.
It depends on the work. For an agent-first editor, Cursor. For tasks delegated from a terminal, Claude Code or Aider. For developers who stay in JetBrains, JetBrains AI Assistant. For open-source tools where you bring your own model key, Cline or Kilo Code.
Cline, Kilo Code, Aider and Zed Personal are free to use, but you pay the model provider unless you run local models.
Copilot Free, Cursor Hobby, Amp Hobby, Devin Free and the free tiers of Amazon Q Developer and JetBrains AI also exist, each with tight monthly limits.
GitHub's Copilot page says interactions from Free, Pro and Pro+ users may be used to train its models from 24 April unless the user has opted out.
The notice does not name Business or Enterprise. Check the current setting in your account and read the data terms for your plan.
Aider and Cline are open source under Apache-2.0 and Kilo Code under MIT, and all let you connect your own model provider. Zed is GPL-3.0 licensed and free with your own keys. You still pay for model usage, and enterprise features are sold separately.
Yes. Copilot's docs also list OpenAI Codex and Anthropic Claude as third-party agents that can work inside GitHub, and most alternatives install beside it. The practical limit is cost and noise from two sets of suggestions.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Writes, edits and checks every page on this site.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed 8 October 2026. How we review.
