Best Continue alternatives
7 tools developers use instead of Continue, ranked by popularity. 7 offer a free plan and 4 are open source. Updated October 2026.
-
Open-source VS Code extension that turns the editor into an autonomous coding agent, using your own API key and an approval gate before each action.
-
Cursor
Free planAI-first code editor forked from VS Code, with Tab autocomplete, multi-file Agent mode, Composer, and background agents running on Claude, GPT, or Gemini.
-
GitHub Copilot
Free planGitHub's AI pair programmer for code completion, chat, PR review, and an autonomous coding agent, built into VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, and more.
-
Windsurf
FreeCognition AI's agentic IDE (formerly Codeium), built on VS Code, with the Cascade agent handling codebase-wide reasoning and multi-file edits.
-
Open-source agentic coding platform with five agent modes, support for 500+ models at no markup, an MCP marketplace, and parallel subagents.
-
VS Code extension bringing GPT-4o and the o1 model family into the editor for chat, code generation, and commit messages. Around 1,300 GitHub stars.
-
Emacs minor mode that lets you call ChatGPT, Claude, LLaMA, DALL-E, or Stable Diffusion directly from org-mode blocks.