Best GitHub Copilot alternatives

Q: What is the best alternative to GitHub Copilot?

Cursor. The most common upgrade: a VS Code replacement that keeps your extensions, with AI edits aware of the whole repo, Tab completion that predicts edits across files, and an agent mode for multi-step tasks. Pro is $20/mo, twice Copilot's entry. You have to leave JetBrains or any non-VS Code editor to use it.

Why people switch

Copilot's listing is candid about where it falls behind: multi-file refactors, where agentic tools are now well ahead. Pricing has also moved away from flat and simple: Pro ($10/mo) and up now layer monthly usage credits on top of the seat fee for premium models, and the free tier's 50 chat requests a month run out quickly for anyone who leans on chat.

1. Cursor

Free · Pro from $20/mo

The most common upgrade: a VS Code replacement that keeps your extensions, with AI edits aware of the whole repo, Tab completion that predicts edits across files, and an agent mode for multi-step tasks. Pro is $20/mo, twice Copilot's entry. You have to leave JetBrains or any non-VS Code editor to use it.

Free tier: Limited Agent requests, access to Composer, no credit card required
Entry paid plan: $20/mo

Try Cursor →Full profile

2. Claude Code

From $20/mo (Claude Pro)

The pick for the refactors Copilot struggles with: it works across the whole repository, runs your tests and fixes failures in a loop, and stays in your terminal or current IDE. It requires Claude Pro at $20/mo ($17/mo billed annually) with no free tier. It offers nothing for plain inline autocomplete, so many people keep Copilot alongside it.

Free tier: None: the free Claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code, only a small one-time API credit on a new Console account
Entry paid plan: $20/mo (Claude Pro, $17/mo billed annually), shares a 5-hour rolling + weekly usage pool with Claude.ai chat

Try Claude Code →Full profile

3. Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)

Free · from $20/mo

A Cursor-style editor, now called Devin Desktop, whose free tier includes unlimited Tab autocomplete plus a light agent quota, so the completion experience you had on Copilot does not become metered. Pro is $20/mo for frontier models and a larger agent quota. Its listing marks it wrong for terminal-first workflows.

Free tier: Unlimited Tab autocomplete plus a light Devin Local agentic usage quota (reported as roughly 25 Flow Actions/month or 2-3 days of active agentic coding, sources disagree on the exact mechanic), no premium model access
Entry paid plan: Pro, $20/month (raised from $15/month around March 2026, before the June 2026 Devin Desktop rebrand), unlocks premium/frontier models and a larger daily/weekly Devin Local quota than Free

Try Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) →Full profile

4. Codex

Limited free access · Go from $8/mo · full Codex with Plus from $20/mo

For the delegate-and-review style: hand it a well-specified task, it works in its own sandbox and opens a pull request when done. Full cloud delegation comes with ChatGPT Plus at $20/mo, which you may already pay for. The wrong choice for exploratory work you need to steer every few minutes.

Free tier: Limited access on the ChatGPT Free tier ($0), no cloud task delegation
Entry paid plan: Go, $8/mo (ChatGPT Go): limited Codex access, no cloud task delegation; Plus, $20/mo, is the practical entry point for full Codex with cloud task delegation

Try Codex →Full profile

Figures verified 2026-08-23 against each vendor's own pages. Where a vendor blocks automated checks, the tool's profile page says so rather than guessing.

Detailed head-to-heads

The full field

These are the strongest switches, not the whole category. All 7 Coding & Dev tools we track are ranked by entry price on the Coding & Dev pricing page.

SearchAll.ai does not sell any of these tools and has no stake in which of these you choose. Some outbound links are affiliate links, marked sponsored; several tools on this page pay us nothing at all. Affiliate status never affects which alternatives we recommend or the order they appear in.