GitHub Copilot Alternatives in 2027: Paid and Free AI Coding Assistants Compared
GitHub Copilot is the default AI coding assistant for many developers, but it is no longer the only serious choice, and in some cases it is not the cheapest one. In a year the market changed a lot: Windsurf is now called Devin Desktop, Amazon is moving Q Developer users to Kiro, Google stopped its free Gemini Code Assist for individuals, Tabnine was bought by Tricentis, and Cursor became part of SpaceX. We checked the free plan and the lowest paid plan of every tool below on its official pricing page in October 2026, so you can compare real prices instead of last year's lists.
Quick answer: if you want an AI-first editor, try Cursor or Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf). If you want an agent that does whole tasks from the terminal, use Claude Code (from $20 a month) or OpenAI Codex, which is included in every ChatGPT plan, even the free one. If you work in IntelliJ IDEA or PyCharm, JetBrains AI with Junie fits best. For the most generous free plans, look at Google Antigravity and Devin Desktop (unlimited Tab completions) or Amp with your own model. Prefer free software you can run on your own machine? See our separate guide to open-source GitHub Copilot alternatives.
Boost Your SEO by Getting Featured in Our Blogs and get a backlink.
We publish content about startups, education, tech, funding, etc. that ranks well not only in Google but also in Perplexity, ChatGPT, Grok and other AI tools.
👉 Get featured now!
GitHub Copilot Alternatives Compared: Prices and Free Plans
Sources: each vendor's official pricing and product pages, default view, checked 28 October 2026. Prices in US dollars before tax.
What GitHub Copilot Costs Now
To compare fairly, start with Copilot itself. According to GitHub's plans page, Copilot Free costs nothing and includes 2,000 inline suggestions a month plus limited chat and agent use. Pro is $10 a month, Pro+ $39 and Max $100, with unlimited inline suggestions. Chat, agent mode, code review and the Copilot CLI now draw on monthly GitHub AI Credits, so heavy agent users can run out before the month ends. That is the main reason founders look elsewhere: a different pricing model, a better agent, or an editor built around AI.
The 10 Best GitHub Copilot Alternatives in 2027
1. Cursor: the AI-first code editor
Cursor is a code editor built around AI agents, with a desktop app, a CLI and cloud agents that work on tasks in parallel. You can pick models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceXAI and Cursor's own Composer models. In August 2026 Cursor announced that it is now part of SpaceX, and its pricing changed with it: the Cursor pricing page now sells shared plans that also cover Grok and X (Twitter) features. The Free plan has limited agent and chat requests; Plus at $8 a month covers Grok models only; Premium at $30 a month adds cloud agents and Bugbot code reviews; Super costs $100 and Ultra $200. Claude, GPT and other third-party models are not included in those prices: Cursor bills them separately at API list price. Teams start at $30 per user a month.
2. Claude Code: Anthropic's coding agent
Claude Code is less of an autocomplete tool and more of a colleague you hand tasks to: a bug fix, tests or a longer migration. You steer it from the terminal, VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, a desktop app for macOS, Linux and Windows, the web, iOS and Android, Slack or GitHub. It is not part of the Free Claude plan. According to Claude's pricing page, it comes with Claude Pro ($20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly), Max (from $100 a month), Team and Enterprise. Team standard seats cost $25 a month, or $20 billed yearly.
3. OpenAI Codex: included with ChatGPT
OpenAI Codex is OpenAI's coding agent, available in the ChatGPT apps, on the web, as a CLI and as an IDE extension. Its pricing page says Codex is included in ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Edu and Enterprise. Free is meant for exploring Codex on quick coding tasks, Go ($8 a month) for lightweight tasks, and Plus ($20 a month) adds Codex on the web, in the CLI, in the IDE extension and on iOS. Pro starts at $100 a month, Business costs $25 per user a month (or $20 billed yearly), and you can also run Codex with an API key at API prices. If you already pay for ChatGPT, this is the cheapest way to get a serious coding agent. The CLI itself is open source, which we cover in our open-source list.
4. Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf): an AI editor with a strong free plan
Devin Desktop is the new name for Windsurf, the editor that started life as Codeium. It is now made by Cognition, the company behind the Devin agent, and the codeium.com and windsurf.com addresses redirect to it. Your Windsurf plan, extensions and settings carry over, and Windsurf for JetBrains IDEs is still available. Devin Desktop builds on the Windsurf IDE and adds a command center for managing local and cloud agents. According to Devin's pricing page, the Free plan includes unlimited Tab completions, unlimited inline edits and a light quota for agents. Pro costs $20 a month, Max $200, and Teams $80 a month plus $40 per developer seat.
Validate your startup idea with the unique borrowed authority approach: we publish articles about your product in our blog and you get traffic and testers for your MVP
- Prove Market Demand: See real organic traffic and waitlist conversions
- Unlock High-Potential Keywords: Receive a curated list of top-performing keywords directly from Google Search Console data.
- Estimate Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Gain financial foresight with an estimated CAC based on real keyword performance data.
🔗 Start validating your startup now
5. JetBrains AI and Junie: for IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm and WebStorm
If your team already works in a JetBrains IDE, the natural alternative is JetBrains' own AI: the AI Assistant for chat and completion, and Junie, its coding agent, which also runs as a CLI. Junie has a planning mode that writes requirements and a design before it touches code, works with any model through your own API key (at the provider's price, with no markup), and supports locally running models. Junie Lite, a free model, is available in every JetBrains account. According to JetBrains' licensing documentation, individuals pay $10 a month for AI Pro and $30 for AI Ultimate (organisations $20 and $60 per user), and AI Pro is included at no extra cost with the All Products Pack and dotUltimate. The old version of this article listed PyCharm itself; PyCharm is the IDE, and JetBrains AI is the part that competes with Copilot.
6. Kiro: AWS's spec-driven AI IDE
Kiro is built and operated by AWS. It turns your prompt into requirements, an architecture design and a list of tasks, then implements them with agents, and checks the result with property-based tests. The IDE is based on Code OSS, so you can import VS Code settings and Open VSX extensions, and there is also a CLI and a web version. You do not need an AWS account to use it. According to Kiro's pricing page, Kiro Free includes 50 credits a month with open-weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5; Pro costs $20 a month (1,000 credits), Pro+ $40, Pro Max $100 and Power $200, with extra credits at $0.04.
7. Google Antigravity: Google's free agent-first IDE
Google Antigravity is Google's family of agentic coding tools: a desktop app, an IDE, IDE extensions, a CLI and an SDK. It replaces Gemini Code Assist for individuals, whose IDE extensions stopped serving requests on 18 June 2026. The individual plan costs $0 and includes access to a range of agent models, unlimited Tab completions and basic weekly rate limits. Higher limits come with Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra subscriptions, and companies can buy it through Google Cloud.
8. Amp: agents that keep working after you close your laptop
Amp is a coding agent and development environment built by the team behind Sourcegraph; Sourcegraph announced in December 2025 that Amp would become an independent company. Its main idea is orbs: machines where agents keep working when you step away, either hosted by Amp or on your own runners. According to Amp's pricing page, the free Hobby tier lets you use your own API keys or your existing ChatGPT and Claude subscriptions with no Amp token fees, pay as you go for Amp-hosted orbs, and run self-hosted orbs for free. The Individual tier costs $20 a month.
9. Augment Code: one flat price for a whole small team
Augment Code is built for large codebases: its Context Engine gives its coding agent, chat and code review the context of your whole codebase, and it works from a CLI and as cloud agents. Its pricing is unusual: the Standard plan is $20 a month flat, with no per-seat charge, for up to 50 seats and $20 of usage included; Business is $100 a month with $100 of usage, and you top up as you go. There is no free plan. Note that Augment Code has announced that it is joining Harness, so check the plans again before you commit for a year.
10. Open-source options: free if you bring your own model
If you mainly want to stop paying per seat, open-source assistants such as Cline, Kilo Code, Aider and OpenCode are free to install and work with your own API key or a local model. We compared them, with licences and hardware needs, in our list of open-source GitHub Copilot alternatives, and the older roundup of free GitHub Copilot alternatives covers more free tools.
Copilot Alternatives That Were Renamed, Sold or Discontinued
Several tools from the 2025 version of this list have changed:
- Codeium: became Windsurf and is now Devin Desktop by Cognition; codeium.com redirects to devin.ai.
- Amazon Q Developer (formerly CodeWhisperer): still sold (Free with 50 agentic requests a month, Pro at $19 per user), but AWS will end support for its IDE plugins on 30 April 2027 and points users to Kiro.
- Sourcegraph Cody: now supported only on Sourcegraph Enterprise; Sourcegraph's individual-developer agent, Amp, became a separate company.
- Tabnine: acquired by Tricentis, a software testing company, in July 2026. Tabnine.com now redirects to Tricentis, with no public price list, so we no longer recommend it to small teams.
- Microsoft IntelliCode: Microsoft deprecated the IntelliCode extensions for VS Code in November 2025; inline suggestions were removed and Microsoft recommends GitHub Copilot instead.
- Gemini Code Assist for individuals: stopped serving requests on 18 June 2026; Google moved individual users to Antigravity. The Standard and Enterprise editions for companies follow a separate schedule.
- Bito: has moved from a coding assistant to AI code review and a model router for other agents; its code review plans start at $12–15 per seat a month, with a 14-day free trial.
- CodeGeeX: its VS Code extension has not been updated since September 2025, so we left it out.
- Aider: still a good tool, but it is open source, so it now sits in our open-source list.
Which GitHub Copilot Alternative Should You Choose?
- You want an editor built around AI: Cursor (now with Grok-based plans) or Devin Desktop.
- You want an agent to do whole tasks: Claude Code, or OpenAI Codex if you already pay for ChatGPT.
- You pay nothing yet: Copilot Free, Google Antigravity, Devin Desktop Free, JetBrains' Junie Lite or Codex in ChatGPT Free, then upgrade the one you use most.
- You work in a JetBrains IDE: JetBrains AI with Junie.
- You build on AWS: Kiro.
- You are a small team on a tight budget: Augment Code's flat $20 plan, or Amp with your existing model subscriptions.
- Your code must stay on your machine: an open-source assistant with a local model.
Comparing other tools for your stack? See our guides to open-source Tabnine alternatives, Replit AI alternatives, open-source Retool alternatives for internal tools, and open-source Zapier alternatives for automation.
How Founders Use AI Coding Assistants
For a small startup, an AI coding assistant is mostly about speed to a first version: a prototype for customer interviews, an internal tool, or a fix you would otherwise wait days for. 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.
A practical tip: most of these tools now charge by usage (credits, tokens or request pools) rather than a flat seat price. Start on the free plan, watch how fast you use it up in a normal week, and only then pick a paid tier. Once your product is live, put it in front of other founders, for example on ElonaHunt:
Join ElonaHunt (like ProductHunt but for women) and explore the coolest women-focused startups out there!
Discover your next big inspiration and connect with like-minded female entrepreneurs!
👉 Join the Hunt Here
FAQ About GitHub Copilot Alternatives
What is the best alternative to GitHub Copilot?
It depends on how you work. Cursor and Devin Desktop are the leading AI-first editors, Claude Code and OpenAI Codex are the strongest agents for whole tasks, and JetBrains AI with Junie is the natural choice inside JetBrains IDEs.
Is there a free alternative to GitHub Copilot?
Yes. Google Antigravity and Devin Desktop have free plans with unlimited Tab completions, Codex is included in ChatGPT Free for quick tasks, JetBrains offers the free Junie Lite model, and Kiro Free gives 50 credits a month. Open-source assistants are free if you bring your own model.
How much does GitHub Copilot cost in 2027?
As of October 2026, Copilot Free costs $0 with 2,000 inline suggestions a month, Pro $10 a month, Pro+ $39 and Max $100. Chat and agent features use monthly GitHub AI Credits.
Is Cursor better than GitHub Copilot?
Cursor is a full editor built around agents, while Copilot plugs into the editor you already use. Note that Cursor's plans changed after it became part of SpaceX: Plus ($8) covers Grok models only, and Claude or GPT models are billed separately at API list price.
What happened to Windsurf and Codeium?
Codeium became Windsurf, and Windsurf is now called Devin Desktop, made by Cognition. Plans, extensions and settings carry over, and Windsurf for JetBrains is still available.
Is Amazon Q Developer being discontinued?
AWS says it will end support for the Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins on 30 April 2027 and recommends Kiro for similar features. Kiro is AWS's AI IDE, with a free plan of 50 credits a month.
Is Claude Code free?
No. Claude Code is not included in the Free Claude plan. It comes with Claude Pro ($20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly), Max, Team and Enterprise plans.
Is Tabnine still available?
Tabnine was acquired by Tricentis in July 2026, and tabnine.com now redirects to Tricentis without a public price list. Small teams are better served by the tools above.
What replaced Gemini Code Assist for individuals?
Google stopped the individual Gemini Code Assist IDE extensions on 18 June 2026 and moved users to Google Antigravity, which has a free individual plan.
How can I get my coding tool featured on Fe/male Switch?
We publish articles about startups and tech tools that rank in Google and in AI answers. See our guest post and backlink options, or use our startup idea validation service to get traffic and testers for a new product.
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.
