AI for Developers
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Best GitHub Copilot alternatives

6 tools developers use instead of GitHub Copilot, ranked by popularity. 6 offer a free plan and 3 are open source. Updated October 2026.

Free Open source Showing 1–6 of 6
  1. Claude Code logo

    Claude Code

    Free plan

    Anthropic's agentic coding tool, running in the terminal, IDE, desktop app, and browser, reading your codebase and editing files with explicit approval.

  2. Cline logo

    Cline

    Free Open source

    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.

  3. Cursor logo

    Cursor

    Free plan

    AI-first code editor forked from VS Code, with Tab autocomplete, multi-file Agent mode, Composer, and background agents running on Claude, GPT, or Gemini.

  4. Windsurf logo

    Windsurf

    Free

    Cognition AI's agentic IDE (formerly Codeium), built on VS Code, with the Cascade agent handling codebase-wide reasoning and multi-file edits.

  5. Continue logo

    Continue

    Free Open source

    Open-source AI coding assistant for VS Code and JetBrains, routing between model providers through one config file, with custom context and Agent mode.

  6. Kilo Code logo

    Kilo Code

    Free Open source

    Open-source agentic coding platform with five agent modes, support for 500+ models at no markup, an MCP marketplace, and parallel subagents.