Side-by-side pricing comparison of Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, Gemini Code Assist, Amazon Q, Claude Code, Augment Code and more. Free tiers, pro plans, and recent pricing changes. Verified June to September 2026.
Published 2026-03-27 · Not yet reviewed · Data verified from our index of 1,547 developer tools · 18 pricing changes tracked
The pricing earthquake: AI coding tools pricing has converged. $20/month is the new standard, $200/month for power users, and free tiers are getting thinner. Windsurf just overhauled from credits to quotas and hiked Pro by 33%. Meanwhile, Gemini Code Assist went fully free with 90× more completions than Copilot's free tier.
Key insight: Cursor and Windsurf now charge identical prices ($20/$200/$40). GitHub Copilot remains the cheapest paid option at $10/mo. Gemini Code Assist offers the most generous free tier by far. Open-source tools (Cline, Aider) remain fully free with BYO API keys.
Our advantage: Unlike other comparison guides, we track pricing changes over time. We've recorded 18 pricing changes for AI coding tools — so you can see not just where prices are, but where they're heading.
Verified June to September 2026. Hover rows to highlight. Click tool names for full vendor profiles with free tier details.
| Tool | Free Tier | Pro | Power | Teams |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor Source ↗ | Limited Agent requests | $20/mo | $200/mo (Ultra) | $40/user/mo |
| Windsurf Unsourced | Limited daily quotas | $20/mo | $200/mo (Max) | $40/seat (Teams) |
| GitHub Copilot Source ↗ | 2K completions/mo | $10/mo | $100/mo (Max) | $19/seat |
| Gemini Code Assist Unsourced | 6K completions/day | — | — | $19/seat |
| Amazon Q Developer Source ↗ | Generous free tier | $19/mo | — | — |
| Claude Code Unsourced | API-based | API usage | $100–200/mo (Max) | $25/seat (Team) |
| Augment Code Unsourced | No free tier | $20/mo flat | $100/mo flat (Business) | Included up to 50 seats |
| Cline | Fully free (OSS) | BYO API key | BYO API key | — |
| Aider | Fully free (OSS) | BYO API key | BYO API key | — |
Free tiers vary wildly. Some are genuinely usable for daily coding, others run out in a few hours. Here's what each tool actually gives you at zero cost.
Hobby is the free plan: no credit card, limited Agent requests, Composer access — Cursor publishes no completion or request figure for it. Paid: Pro $20/mo, Pro+ $60/mo (3x Pro's Agent limits), Ultra $200/mo (20x), Teams $40/user/mo, Enterprise custom.
Limited daily quotas for completions, chat, and Cascade flows. Three paid tiers: Pro ($20/mo), Teams ($40/mo/seat), Max ($200/mo). SWE-1.5 Fast Agent model. Credit system replaced by quotas in March 2026. Grandfathered Pro subscribers keep $15/mo indefinitely.
2,000 code completions/month plus limited chat and agent use. On paid plans completions and next edit suggestions are unlimited and consume nothing; everything else is metered in GitHub AI Credits at $0.01 each — Pro $10/mo ($15 of credits), Pro+ $39/mo ($70), Max $100/mo ($200). Business $19/seat (1,900 credits/user), Enterprise $39/seat (3,900/user). Student plan (Mar 2026): premium models via Auto mode only, no manual selection.
6,000 code completions/day (~180,000/month), 240 chat messages/day. Powered by Gemini 2.5 Pro. Supports VS Code, JetBrains, Android Studio, Cloud Shell. No credit card required. 90× more completions than Copilot free tier.
Inline code suggestions, chat, code transformation, 50 agent invocations/month, /doc and /test commands. Supports VS Code, JetBrains, CLI, and AWS Console. Best value if you're already on AWS.
Terminal-based agentic coding tool. Available via Claude Pro ($20/mo), Team ($25/seat), and Max ($100–200/mo) subscriptions. All paid plans now have pay-as-you-go overage at API rates. April 2026: third-party tools billed separately, peak-hour throttling weekdays 5–11 AM PT.
No free tier. Standard $20/month flat and Business $100/month flat, each covering up to 50 seats with $20 and $100 of included monthly usage respectively across LLM, Context Engine and compute; top-ups are pay-as-you-go. Enterprise is custom-priced. Flat team pricing with no per-seat charge.
Fully free, open-source (MIT). VS Code extension — users provide their own API keys (OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.). No usage limits beyond API provider costs. Autonomous file editing, terminal commands, browser interaction.
Fully free, open-source (Apache 2.0). CLI tool — users provide their own LLM API keys. Supports GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, and local models via Ollama. Git-aware editing, multi-file changes, voice coding.
The AI coding market has been in flux. Here are the pricing changes we've tracked, most recent first. See full change timeline for all tracked changes.
| Date | Vendor | Change | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| effective Sep 2, 2026 | Cursor | Data correction — we published a Hobby tier at $10/month that Cursor has never offered. Hobby is the name of Cursor's free plan. Our free-tier description also carried GitHub Copilot's 2,000-completions figure, which appears nowhere on cursor.com/pricing. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| discovered Aug 28, 2026 · effective date unknown | GitHub Copilot | The free tier still exists with 2,000 completions/month and access to Haiku 4.5, GPT-5 mini, and more. Pro is now $10/month with unlimited code completion and access to Claude Code and Codex. Pro+ is $39/month with access to premium models including Opus. Max is a new tier at $100/month. Business is $19/user/month and Enterprise is $39/user/month. Corrected 2026-09-02: this row previously opened by stating that Pro, Pro+ and Copilot Student signups were paused. GitHub's plans documentation offers all three to new users and the changelog post announcing that pause is marked Retired. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| discovered Aug 28, 2026 · effective date unknown | Cursor | The free tier now includes 'Limited Agent requests' and 'Access to Composer' instead of '2,000 completions/month, 50 slow premium requests'. The pricing structure has been significantly restructured with new tiers (Individual, Pro, Pro+, Ultra, Teams Standard, Teams Premium, Enterprise) and a focus on 'Agent' and 'Grok' limits. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| discovered Aug 28, 2026 · effective date unknown | Augment Code | The free tier has been removed. The entry plan is Standard at $20/month flat, with Business at $100/month flat; each covers up to 50 seats and includes $20 and $100 of monthly usage respectively. Corrected 2026-09-02: this row previously stated the lowest tier was Business at $100/month. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Apr 22, 2026 | GitHub Copilot | No longer in force (2026-09-01). GitHub paused new self-serve signups for Copilot Business by organizations on GitHub Free and GitHub Team plans, two days after the pause on individual plans. Existing Copilot Business customers were unaffected and could keep adding seats. Copilot Enterprise was not named in the announcement. Reversed: GitHub's 2026-08-28 changelog states "Starting September 1, 2026, GitHub will start reenabling sign-ups for new Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise customers paying by credit card or PayPal." The pause announcement is marked Retired. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Apr 20, 2026 | GitHub Copilot | No longer in force (2026-09-02). GitHub paused new signups for Copilot Pro, Pro+, and Copilot Student plans citing infrastructure strain from agentic AI workflows (long-running, parallelized sessions overwhelming capacity). Existing users are unaffected. Free tier signups remain open. Same announcement also removed Claude Opus from Pro (now Pro+ only) and tightened usage limits on individual plans. Reversed: GitHub's changelog post for this change is marked Retired, and its plans documentation offers Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max and Copilot Student to new users, verified 2026-09-02. A separate pause dated 2026-04-22 covered new self-serve signups for Copilot Business by organizations on GitHub Free and GitHub Team plans, and did not cover Copilot Enterprise; GitHub reenabled signups for new Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise customers paying by credit card or PayPal from 2026-09-01. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Apr 13, 2026 | Windsurf | Windsurf Max plan ($200/mo) confirmed as power-user tier alongside Teams ($40/mo/seat). SWE-1.5 Fast Agent model announced for faster iteration. Full tier lineup: Free (limited daily quotas), Pro ($20/mo), Teams ($40/mo), Max ($200/mo). Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 13, 2026 | Cursor | Retracted — this record was our error (2026-09-02). Cursor now offers 6 plans: Free, Hobby ($10/mo), Pro ($20/mo), Pro+ ($60/mo), Business ($40/seat), Ultra ($200/mo). Hobby tier added as lighter paid option between Free and Pro. Credit-based pricing model since June 2025. Retracted 2026-09-02: Cursor has never offered a $10/month Hobby tier - Hobby is the name of its free plan. This row was our error, not a change Cursor made. Source ↗ | LOW |
| effective Apr 12, 2026 | Augment Code | Free tier removed. Lowest plan is now Indie at $20/month with 40K credits. Credit-based consumption model replaces flat per-seat pricing Source ↗ Superseded by our Aug 28, 2026 record |
MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 10, 2026 | GitHub Copilot | No longer in force (2026-09-02). GitHub paused new Copilot Pro trials due to abuse. Existing trials continued through their term. New users could still subscribe to Pro directly (paid) until the broader April 20 signup pause closed that path too. Resolved: Copilot Pro is open to new subscribers, verified 2026-09-02 against GitHub's plans documentation. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 7, 2026 | Cursor | Cursor introduced Pro+ tier at $60/month between Pro ($20) and Ultra ($200). Pro+ includes 10x premium model requests vs Pro, priority access, and expanded context window. Expands the pricing ladder from 3 tiers (Free/Pro/Ultra) to 4 (Free/Pro/Pro+/Ultra), filling the $20-$200 gap. Source ↗ Superseded by our Aug 28, 2026 record |
MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 1, 2026 | Windsurf | Grandfathered Pro pricing ($15/mo) confirmed indefinite. Credit system fully replaced by daily/weekly quotas for all plans. Source ↗ | LOW |
| effective Mar 19, 2026 | Windsurf | Windsurf replaced credits-based pricing with daily/weekly quotas (Mar 19, 2026). New tiers: Pro $20/mo (was $15), Ultimate $40/mo, Team $200/mo/seat. Free tier changed from flexible credits to hard quotas. Existing Pro subscribers grandfathered at $15/mo Source ↗ Superseded by our Apr 13, 2026 record |
MEDIUM |
| effective Mar 12, 2026 | GitHub Copilot | Student plan now managed under dedicated 'GitHub Copilot Student' plan. Premium models (GPT-5.4, Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet) removed from manual self-selection — still available via Auto mode (system picks the model). Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Feb 1, 2026 | GitHub Copilot | Premium request model introduced across all tiers. Free: 50/mo, Pro: 300, Pro+: 1,500, Business: 300/user, Enterprise: 1,000/user. Overage at $0.04/request. Advanced reasoning models consume 5x-20x per interaction Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Dec 18, 2025 | GitHub Copilot | GitHub launched Copilot Free tier — AI code completion available to all GitHub users at no cost. 2,000 completions and 50 chat messages per month included Source ↗ Superseded by our Aug 28, 2026 record |
HIGH |
| effective Oct 1, 2025 | Augment Code | Shifted from per-seat subscription to credit-based consumption model Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jun 1, 2025 | Cursor | Moved from flat monthly subscription to credit-based pricing model with new $200/month Ultra tier Source ↗ Superseded by our Aug 28, 2026 record |
MEDIUM |
Gemini Code Assist (free, 180K completions/month) or GitHub Copilot ($10/mo, cheapest paid tier). Copilot is free for verified students and OSS maintainers.
Cursor Pro or Windsurf Pro (both $20/mo). Cursor has more mature multi-model support. Windsurf's agentic Cascade flows are compelling for complex tasks.
Cursor Ultra or Windsurf Max ($200/mo). For developers who hit Pro limits regularly. Also consider Claude Code via Max subscription ($100–200/mo) for autonomous terminal-based workflows.
All converging at $19–$40/seat. GitHub Copilot Business ($19/seat) is cheapest. Gemini Code Assist Enterprise ($19/seat) matches on price and adds deep Google Cloud integration. Cursor/Windsurf Business ($40/seat) for teams needing maximum AI throughput.
A source check reads each cited page for that service's name and a price; the figures in the tables above are from our own records.
Compare AI coding tool pricing, search free tiers, and track pricing changes — all from your AI coding assistant.
claude mcp add agentdeals -- npx -y agentdealsWorks with Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf → Full setup guide