Free Tabnine Alternatives in 2027: AI Code Assistants With a Real Free Plan
Tabnine was one of the first AI code completion tools, and for years its free tier was the reason many developers installed it. That changed: in July 2026 Tricentis, a software testing company, bought Tabnine, and on 10 November 2026 tabnine.com redirected to Tricentis while Tabnine's own documentation listed only Enterprise plans. If you search for a free Tabnine alternative, this list shows the AI coding assistants that still have a free plan, what each free plan really includes and where its limits are. We checked every plan on the official pricing page on 10 November 2026.
Quick answer: the closest free replacement for Tabnine's completions in your current editor is GitHub Copilot Free (2,000 completions a month, no credit card). For unlimited Tab completions at $0, try Google Antigravity or Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf and Codeium). In a JetBrains IDE, use JetBrains AI Free with Junie Lite. If you chose Tabnine for privacy, Tabby is free, open source and runs on your own server.
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Free Tabnine Alternatives Compared
Sources: each vendor's official pricing, product or documentation page, default view, checked 10 November 2026. Prices in US dollars before tax.
Is Tabnine Still Free in 2027?
No, not as far as its public pages show. On 10 November 2026 the address tabnine.com/pricing redirected to a Tricentis contact form, and the Tabnine subscription plans page in its documentation listed only two plans, Enterprise (SaaS) and Enterprise (private installation), both set up together with the Tabnine team. The free Basic plan that older lists mention is gone. According to the Tricentis announcement of 30 July 2026, Tricentis will build Tabnine's Enterprise Context Engine into its quality engineering platform. Tabnine today describes itself as a private, organization-aware AI coding agent for companies, so for a solo developer or a small startup the tools below are the realistic options.
The Best Free Tabnine Alternatives in 2027
1. GitHub Copilot Free: the closest like-for-like swap
If you used Tabnine for code completion inside VS Code or a JetBrains IDE, Copilot Free is the smallest change. According to GitHub's plans page, the Free plan costs $0, needs no credit card and includes 2,000 completions a month, models such as Claude Haiku 4.5 and GPT-5 mini, the Copilot CLI and limited chat and agent usage. It works in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, Neovim, Eclipse and on github.com. Verified students get the separate Copilot Student plan. When you hit the limits, Pro costs $10 a month with unlimited completions.
2. Google Antigravity: unlimited Tab completions at $0
Google Antigravity is Google's family of agentic coding tools: a desktop app, an IDE, IDE extensions, a CLI and an SDK. Its individual plan costs $0 and includes access to a variety of agent models, unlimited Tab completions, unlimited Command requests and basic weekly rate limits; Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions raise the limits. It is also what replaced the old free Gemini Code Assist for individuals: according to Google's deprecation notice, those IDE extensions (and Gemini CLI with a Google login) stopped serving requests on 18 June 2026, and users can move to Antigravity.
3. Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf and Codeium): a free AI editor
Codeium was the most common answer to "free Tabnine alternative" in 2024 and 2025. It became Windsurf, and Windsurf is now Devin Desktop, made by Cognition; codeium.com and windsurf.com both redirect there, and existing Windsurf installs get it as an update. According to Devin's pricing page, the Free plan includes unlimited Tab completions, unlimited inline edits, a light quota for coding with agents and limited model availability. Pro costs $20 a month. The catch for Tabnine users: it is a separate editor, not a plugin for the editor you already use.
4. Cursor Free: try the best-known AI editor
Cursor is an AI-first code editor with agents, chat and its own completion model. Its Free plan costs $0 with limited AI usage, limited agent requests and limited chat requests. Cursor's plans now also bundle Grok and X features: Plus at $8 a month covers Grok models only, and third-party models such as Claude or GPT are billed separately at API list price on the higher plans. Cursor also bought Continue, the open-source assistant that used to appear in free lists; continue.dev now says Continue was acquired by Cursor.
5. JetBrains AI Free and Junie Lite: for IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm and WebStorm
For developers in JetBrains IDEs, the built-in option is the easiest. According to JetBrains' licensing documentation, the AI Free tier is available in most JetBrains IDEs from version 2025.1 and includes 3 AI credits every 30 days for cloud features; AI Pro costs $10 a month with 10 credits, and each credit is worth $1. On top of that, Junie, JetBrains' coding agent, now has Junie Lite, a free model with no trial and no card, plus bring-your-own-key use at the provider's price and support for local models.
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6. Kiro and Amazon Q Developer: AWS's free tiers
Kiro is AWS's spec-driven AI editor. Kiro Free costs $0 and includes 50 credits a month with open-weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5; Pro is $20 a month for 1,000 credits. AWS's older assistant, Amazon Q Developer, still has a Free tier with 50 agentic requests a month in the IDE and CLI (Pro is $19 per user a month), but AWS says it will discontinue support for the Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins on 30 April 2027 and points users to Kiro. Start with Kiro if you are choosing today.
7. OpenAI Codex in ChatGPT Free: a coding agent you may already have
If you have a ChatGPT account, you already have Codex. The Codex pricing page says Codex is included in ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Edu and Enterprise. The Free plan is meant for exploring Codex on quick coding tasks; Go ($8 a month) is for lightweight tasks, and Plus ($20 a month) lists Codex on the web, in the CLI, in the IDE extension and on iOS. Codex is an agent you give tasks to rather than an autocomplete, so it complements a completion tool more than it replaces one.
8. Amp Hobby: free if you already pay for a model
Amp is a coding agent built by the team that spun out of Sourcegraph. Its Hobby tier is free: you bring your own API keys or use your existing ChatGPT and Claude subscriptions, with no Amp token fees, run self-hosted "orbs" (machines where agents keep working) for free, and pay as you go only for Amp-hosted orbs. It suits founders who already pay for a model and do not want another subscription.
9. Tabby: the free, self-hosted choice for privacy
Many teams picked Tabnine because it promised that code stays private. The free tool closest to that promise is Tabby, an open-source, self-hosted AI coding assistant. Its Community plan is free and open source for up to 5 users with local deployment, code completion, an Answer Engine, inline chat and context providers; Team costs $19 per seat a month for up to 50 users. You run it on your own computer or server. The latest release on Tabby's GitHub repository is v0.32.0 from January 2026, with commits into mid-2026, so check activity before you build on it.
10. Cline and Kilo Code: free open-source agents for VS Code
Cline is an open-source coding agent that its pricing page calls free for individual developers: the VS Code extension and the CLI cost nothing, and you pay only for AI inference, with your own API keys or Cline's provider. The JetBrains extension is part of its Enterprise plan. Kilo Code works the same way, free and open source (MIT licence) with paid team and enterprise plans. Both are agents rather than pure autocomplete, and both can run local models, which our open-source GitHub Copilot alternatives guide covers in detail.
How to Switch From Tabnine Without Paying
- Pick by editor. Staying in VS Code or a JetBrains IDE: Copilot Free, JetBrains AI Free or Cline. Open to a new editor: Antigravity, Devin Desktop, Cursor or Kiro.
- Check privacy. All cloud tools send code to a model provider. If that is a problem for you or a client, self-host Tabby or run Cline with a local model.
- Test for one week. Use the same repository and the same kind of tasks in two tools, and note when each free plan runs out.
- Upgrade one tool. Pay only for the one you used most; the paid plans above start at $8 to $20 a month.
Tools From Older Free Tabnine Lists That Changed or Shut Down
- Tabnine: bought by Tricentis (30 July 2026); its pricing page now redirects to a Tricentis contact form and its docs list Enterprise plans only.
- Codeium: renamed Windsurf, now Devin Desktop by Cognition (listed above).
- Gemini Code Assist for individuals: stopped on 18 June 2026; Google moved individual users to Antigravity.
- Sourcegraph Cody: the Cody documentation now says it is supported on Sourcegraph Enterprise, so there is no free plan for individuals.
- Supermaven: Cursor bought it in 2024, and on 21 November 2025 Supermaven announced it was sunsetting the product: refunds for paying users, free autocomplete only for existing Neovim and JetBrains customers, and VS Code users told to move to Cursor. It is not an option for new users.
- Continue: acquired by Cursor; the open-source code stays available, but new users are better served by Cline or Kilo Code.
- Kite: its founder said farewell on 16 November 2022 and stopped supporting the software; kite.com now shows a parked domain.
- Refact.ai: its site says Refact Cloud has been discontinued, and its GitHub repository is archived.
- CodeT5 and Jedi: CodeT5 is an archived research model, not an assistant, and Jedi is a Python autocompletion library that editors use, not an AI tool, so both left the list.
Which Free Tabnine Alternative Should You Choose?
- You want completions in the editor you already use: GitHub Copilot Free.
- You want the most generous free completions: Google Antigravity or Devin Desktop, both with unlimited Tab completions.
- You work in IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm or WebStorm: JetBrains AI Free with Junie Lite.
- Your code must stay on your own servers: Tabby Community (up to 5 users), or Cline with a local model.
- You already pay for ChatGPT or Claude: Codex in ChatGPT, or Amp Hobby with your existing subscription.
- You build on AWS: Kiro Free rather than Amazon Q Developer, whose IDE plugins lose support in April 2027.
- You are a large company that liked Tabnine's private deployment: Tabnine Enterprise is still sold through Tricentis sales; compare it with paid options in our GitHub Copilot alternatives list.
How Founders Use Free AI Coding Assistants
For a small startup, a free AI coding assistant is mostly about speed to a first version: a prototype for customer interviews, an internal tool or a quick fix. Our guides on building an AI MVP on a budget and no-code MVP development show where coding help fits, and the rise of vibe coding explains how non-developers now build software with AI. For more tools by use case, see the best AI coding tools for entrepreneurs.
More developer tool lists: open-source Tabnine alternatives, free GitHub Copilot alternatives, Replit AI alternatives, open-source ChatGPT alternatives, Snyk alternatives for code security, open-source Retool alternatives for internal tools, free Bubble alternatives and free Glide alternatives for no-code apps, free AppSheet alternatives, open-source OutSystems alternatives, and open-source Zapier alternatives and free Make alternatives for automation.
A practical tip: free plans now count usage in credits, requests or completions rather than days. Start two free plans, watch how fast you use them up in a normal week, and only then pay for one. Once your product is live, put it in front of other founders, for example on ElonaHunt:
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FAQ About Free Tabnine Alternatives
Is Tabnine free in 2027?
No free plan is shown today. On 10 November 2026 tabnine.com/pricing redirected to a Tricentis contact form, and Tabnine's documentation listed only Enterprise (SaaS) and Enterprise (private installation) plans.
What is the best free alternative to Tabnine?
For completions in your current editor, GitHub Copilot Free (2,000 completions a month). For unlimited free Tab completions, Google Antigravity or Devin Desktop. For private, self-hosted completion, Tabby's free Community plan.
Who owns Tabnine now?
Tricentis, a software testing company, announced on 30 July 2026 that it had acquired Tabnine and will build Tabnine's Enterprise Context Engine into its quality engineering platform.
Is Tabnine worth paying for over free alternatives like Codeium?
For individuals the question has changed: Tabnine no longer shows a public plan for individuals, and Codeium is now Devin Desktop, whose Free plan has unlimited Tab completions. Paying makes sense only if your company needs Tabnine's private enterprise deployment.
What happened to Codeium?
Codeium became Windsurf, and Windsurf is now called Devin Desktop, made by Cognition. codeium.com and windsurf.com redirect to devin.ai, and existing Windsurf installs get Devin Desktop as an update.
Is GitHub Copilot free?
Yes, there is a Free plan: $0, no credit card, 2,000 completions a month, limited chat and agent usage and the Copilot CLI. Verified students can get the Copilot Student plan, and Pro costs $10 a month.
Is there a free self-hosted Tabnine alternative?
Yes. Tabby is open source and self-hosted; its Community plan is free for up to 5 users. Cline and Kilo Code are free open-source agents that can also run local models.
What replaced Gemini Code Assist for individuals?
Google stopped the free Gemini Code Assist IDE extensions for individuals on 18 June 2026 and moved users to Google Antigravity, which has a $0 individual plan with unlimited Tab completions.
Is Sourcegraph Cody still free?
No. Cody's documentation says it is supported on Sourcegraph Enterprise. Sourcegraph's agent for individuals, Amp, became a separate company and has a free Hobby tier if you bring your own model.
Where can I submit a guest post about my developer tool?
You can publish a guest post in one of the Fe/male Switch startup blogs, which rank in Google and in AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Get a quality backlink.
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
