Compare 17 AI coding tools: Cursor, Windsurf, Amazon Kiro, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Devin, Bolt.new, Lovable, Codex, Gemini CLI and more. Free tiers, hidden costs, cost analysis for solo devs and teams. Compiled 2026-04-08.
Published 2026-04-08 · Reviewed 2026-09-13, corrections outstanding · 17 tools compared · Figures compiled 2026-04-08 · 22 of 22 figures in the “Recent Pricing Changes” table come from our records for 1,493 developer tools · 24 pricing changes tracked
The AI coding tools market in April 2026: 17 tools across four categories — IDE-based editors, CLI/terminal agents, cloud coding agents, and AI app builders. $20/month has become the standard price point. Some free tiers are metered by the month (GitHub Copilot Free: 2,000 completions), some publish no figure (Devin's Free plan: a "light quota"), and Google ended the free Gemini Code Assist individuals tier on 2026-06-18. The BYOK (bring your own key) tools — Cline, Aider, Gemini CLI — are technically free but shift costs to API providers.
Key trends: Credit and quota models are replacing flat subscriptions (Cursor Jun 2025, Augment Oct 2025, Windsurf Mar 2026). Cloud agents (Codex, Devin) are a newer category.
This guide covers: pricing tables, category breakdowns, what you actually get for free, cost analysis for solo devs and teams, hidden costs, and best-for-use-case recommendations — compiled by hand from vendor pricing pages.
Compiled 2026-04-08. Hover rows to highlight. Click tool names for full vendor profiles with free tier details.
| Tool | Free Tier | Pro | Power | Teams |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor | Limited Agent requests | $20/mo | $200/mo (Ultra) | $40/user/mo |
| Windsurf | Limited daily quotas | $20/mo | $200/mo (Max) | $80/mo + $40/seat |
| Amazon Kiro | 50 credits/mo | $20/mo | $40/mo (Pro+) / $100/mo (Pro Max) / $200/mo (Power) | Enterprise (custom) |
| GitHub Copilot | 2K completions/mo | $10/mo | $100/mo (Max) | $19/seat |
| Gemini Code Assist | Ended 2026-06-18 | — | — | $22.80/seat |
| Google Antigravity | $0 plan, weekly limits | $19.99/mo (Google AI Pro) | From $99.99/mo (Google AI Ultra) | Via Google Cloud |
| Claude Code | None (paid plans or API key) | $20/mo (Pro) | $100–200/mo (Max) | $25/seat |
| Gemini CLI | With a Gemini API key | Gemini API pricing | — | — |
| Cline | Fully free (OSS) | BYO API key | BYO API key | — |
| Aider | Fully free (OSS) | BYO API key | BYO API key | — |
| Amazon Q Developer | New signups blocked 2026-05-15 | $19/mo | — | — |
| Augment Code | No free tier | $20/mo flat | $100/mo flat (Business) | Included up to 50 seats |
| OpenAI Codex | Limited (ChatGPT Free) | $20/mo (Plus) | $100, $200 or $500/mo (ChatGPT Pro) | $20/user |
| Devin | Light agent quota | $20/mo | $200/mo (Max) | $80/mo + $40/seat |
| Bolt.new | 1M tokens/mo | $25/mo | — | $30/member |
| Lovable | 5 credits/day | $25/mo | — | $50/mo (Business) |
| MarsCode | Ended 2025-04-01 | — | — | — |
AI coding tools fall into four distinct categories, each with different use cases and pricing models.
A date in a heading below cites a record we hold, not a property of the vendor it names. These figures were compiled on 2026-04-08; a dated badge marks a card whose vendor we have recorded a change for since, and the date moves to the newer record on the day that record takes effect. Every record we hold for any vendor named below is in the full change log.
Full IDEs with AI built in. Install, open your project, and get AI suggestions, chat, and agentic coding inside your editor.
Hobby is Cursor's free plan — no credit card required, limited Agent requests, access to Composer. Cursor's pricing page states no completion or premium-request figure for it. Pro is $20/mo, Pro+ $60/mo at 3x Pro's Agent limits, Ultra $200/mo at 20x. Teams $40/user/mo (Premium at 5x Standard). Enterprise is custom-priced with pooled usage and SCIM. Cursor renders only the selected tier's price in the page body; the full ladder is in the page's JSON-LD Offer list.
Renamed Devin Desktop by Cognition, and priced with Devin on devin.ai/pricing. Free: a light quota to code with agents, limited models, unlimited inline edits and Tab completions, with quotas that reset daily and weekly. Pro $20/mo, Max $200/mo, Teams $80/mo plus $40 per dev seat. Credits were replaced by quotas in March 2026; subscribers on the old $15/mo Pro price keep it.
AI coding tool by AWS, with an IDE, a CLI and a web interface. Prompts run by default on Auto, a mix of frontier models; Claude, GPT and open-weight models can also be picked. Free: 50 credits/month with open-weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5, rate-limited to a weekly quota. Pro: 1,000 credits, Pro+: 2,000, Pro Max: 5,000, Power: 10,000. Paid plans can buy add-on credits at $0.04 each.
2,000 code completions/month plus limited chat and agent usage, no credit card. On every paid plan, code completions and next edit suggestions are unlimited and do not consume credits — all other usage is metered in GitHub AI Credits at $0.01 per credit. Pro $10/mo: $15 of monthly credits (1,000 base + 500 flex). Pro+ $39/mo: $70 (3,900 + 3,100), adds premium models including Opus. Max $100/mo: $200 (10,000 + 10,000), 2.9x Pro+'s included usage. Business $19/seat: 1,900 credits/user. Enterprise $39/seat: 3,900/user. Student plan (Mar 2026): premium models available only via Auto mode.
Free tier: none. Google Gemini Code Assist's offer is recorded as Retired. Our own pricing change record, on 2026-06-18, says: Google stopped serving Gemini Code Assist for individuals, its free tier, on 2026-06-18. The IDE extensions and Gemini CLI no longer accept Login with Google for the individuals, Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra tiers. Google stopped selling new Standard and Enterprise subscriptions on 2026-10-09. Existing subscribers can add licenses until 2027-01-31. Annual subscriptions can auto-renew until 2027-01-31; monthly subscriptions can auto-renew until 2027-12-31. Agentic coding assistance is now available through Antigravity, included in Gemini Enterprise editions. Source ↗ Read what we recorded →
Agentic development platform by Google, generally available: a desktop app to run several local agents in parallel, an agentic IDE, a CLI and an SDK, for macOS, Windows and Linux. The individual plan is $0/month, with unlimited Tab completions and command requests and basic weekly rate limits.
Free tier: none. Augment Code's offer is recorded as Retired. Our own pricing change record, discovered 2026-04-12, says: Free tier removed. Lowest plan is now Indie at $20/month with 40K credits. Credit-based consumption model replaces flat per-seat pricing Source ↗ Read what we recorded →
The MarsCode cloud IDE ended on 2025-04-01. The extension is now Trae Plugin. marscode.com promotes the Trae AI IDE.
Terminal-based tools that run alongside any editor. Best for developers who prefer command-line workflows or want to use AI without switching editors.
Agentic coding tool by Anthropic, in the terminal, IDEs, a desktop app and the browser. Included in every paid Claude plan, not in Free: Pro $20/mo ($17 billed annually), Max $100 or $200/mo, Team Standard $25/seat ($20 billed annually), Enterprise $20/seat plus usage at API rates. Also runs on an Anthropic API key, billed per token.
Open-source terminal AI agent by Google, Apache 2.0 licensed. Login with Google stopped working for personal accounts on 2026-06-18; it runs on a Gemini API key, Vertex AI, or a Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licence. Supports MCP tools, shell commands, file editing.
Cline is Apache 2.0 licensed. Users can bring their own API keys or use the Cline provider. 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.
Inline code suggestions, chat, code transformation, 50 agent invocations/month. Supports VS Code, JetBrains, CLI, and AWS Console. New sign-ups and subscriptions were blocked from 2026-05-15. Existing subscriptions can add users. Support ends on 2027-04-30. AWS recommends Kiro.
Cloud-hosted AI that runs code in sandboxed environments. Can execute tests, create PRs, and work autonomously. You review the output, not the keystrokes.
Coding agent by OpenAI, included in every ChatGPT plan. Free ($0) and Go ($8/mo) cover quick and lightweight coding tasks in the desktop app. Plus ($20/mo) adds Codex on the web, in the CLI, in the IDE extension and on iOS, with cloud code review. ChatGPT Pro plans are $100, $200, or $500 USD per month and currently have no five-hour limit. Business is $20/user/mo billed annually ($25 monthly). With an API key, Codex runs in the CLI, SDK or IDE extension at API prices.
Autonomous AI software engineer by Cognition. Since 2026-04-14 the plans are Free ($0: a light quota to code with agents, limited models, unlimited inline edits and Tab completions), Pro ($20/mo, adds cloud agents), Max ($200/mo) and Teams ($80/mo plus $40 per dev seat). Enterprise is custom-priced and billed in ACUs.
Generate full-stack apps from natural language descriptions. Optimized for prototyping, MVPs, and non-developers building software.
AI builder for websites, web apps and mobile apps by StackBlitz. Free: 1M tokens/month with a 300K daily limit, public and private projects, unlimited databases, 10MB file uploads, and hosting on a bolt.host URL (10 GB bandwidth, 333,333 requests a month) with Bolt branding.
AI app builder (formerly GPT Engineer). Free: 5 build credits a day (up to 30 a month) plus 20 Cloud credits a month, workspace-private projects, unlimited collaborators and 5 lovable.app domains, no credit card.
Free tiers vary wildly. Here's the honest breakdown — not marketing copy, but what you actually get at zero cost and when you'll hit the wall.
| Tool | Free Tier Type | What You Get | When You Hit the Wall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor | Limited free tier | Limited Agent requests | 1–2 weeks of active coding |
| Windsurf | Limited free tier | Limited daily quotas | 1–2 weeks of active coding |
| Amazon Kiro | Limited free tier | 50 credits/mo | 1–2 weeks of active coding |
| GitHub Copilot | Limited free tier | 2K completions/mo | 1–2 weeks of active coding |
| Gemini Code Assist | No free tier | Ended 2026-06-18 | Immediately |
| Google Antigravity | Limited free tier | $0 plan, weekly limits | 1–2 weeks of active coding |
| Claude Code | No free tier | None (paid plans or API key) | Immediately |
| Gemini CLI | Free (BYO API key) | With a Gemini API key | Never (but API bill grows) |
| Cline | Free (BYO API key) | Fully free (OSS) | Never (but API bill grows) |
| Aider | Free (BYO API key) | Fully free (OSS) | Never (but API bill grows) |
| Amazon Q Developer | No free tier | New signups blocked 2026-05-15 | Immediately |
| Augment Code | No free tier | No free tier | Immediately |
| OpenAI Codex | Limited free tier | Limited (ChatGPT Free) | 1–2 weeks of active coding |
| Devin | Limited free tier | Light agent quota | 1–2 weeks of active coding |
| Bolt.new | Freemium | 1M tokens/mo | Days of active building |
| Lovable | Freemium | 5 credits/day | Days of active building |
| MarsCode | No free tier | Ended 2025-04-01 | Immediately |
What does each tool actually cost for a solo developer coding 4 hours/day versus a team of 5?
| Tool | Solo Dev /mo | Team of 5 /mo | Key Cost Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor | $20 | $200 | Usage cost varies by model. Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4/$20 per million tokens, twice the $2/$10 cost of Claude Sonnet 5.5. |
| Windsurf | $20 | $280 | Quotas are hard daily and weekly limits; past them, paid plans buy extra usage at API list prices. Max ($200/mo) is the power-user tier. Pro rose from $15 to $20 in March 2026; subscribers on the old price keep it. |
| Amazon Kiro | $0–20 | Enterprise (custom) | Credit use depends on the model and the task. Add-on credits ($0.04 each) are for paid plans only. The free tier is not available in Kiro Enterprise or AWS GovCloud (US), where prices are about 20% higher. |
| GitHub Copilot | $10 | $95 | Agent and chat usage is metered — an AI credit is $0.01, and Pro's $15 monthly allowance drains faster on premium models. Code completions and next edit suggestions are exempt and unlimited on every paid plan. Premium requests, their 5x–20x model multipliers and the $0.04 per-request overage are retired; GitHub's own billing docs label that model legacy. Reaching the full model lineup still means Pro+ at $39/mo. Student plan (Mar 2026): premium model self-selection removed — GPT-5.4, Claude Opus, Sonnet only via Auto mode. |
| Gemini Code Assist | $22.80 | $114 | Gemini Code Assist Standard is $22.80/user/month or $19/user/month annually. Enterprise is $54/user/month or $45/user/month annually. |
| Google Antigravity | $0–19.99 | Usage-based (Google Cloud) | The free plan's quota refreshes weekly. Google AI Pro ($19.99/mo) and Ultra (from $99.99/mo) raise the limits and can spend purchased AI credits past them. Organizations pay consumption-based API prices through Google Cloud. |
| Claude Code | $20–200+ | $125+ | Plan usage is shared with Claude chat and resets in five-hour windows. At the limit, paid plans can turn on usage credits billed at standard API rates, so heavy use can cost more than the plan price. |
| Gemini CLI | $0 | $0 | Model use is billed at Gemini API rates after the API's own free tier. Open-source, so no lock-in. |
| Cline | $5–50 (API) | $25–250 (API) | Tool is free but API costs add up. A typical Cline session using Claude Sonnet costs $0.50–$5 depending on context size. Heavy users report $50–100/mo in API costs. |
| Aider | $5–50 (API) | $25–250 (API) | Can run with free local models (Ollama/DeepSeek) for zero cost, but quality drops significantly vs cloud models. Budget $10–30/mo for API-based usage. |
| Amazon Q Developer | $19 | $95 | 50 agent invocations/month is the main limit. Pro at $19/mo unlocks higher limits and security scanning. |
| Augment Code | $20 | $20 | Included usage is $20/month on Standard and $100/month on Business; beyond it, top-ups are pay-as-you-go. Codebase indexing is the value-add but costs scale with repo size. |
| OpenAI Codex | $0–100+ | $100 | Free and Go state no message count. Plus and Business allowances are per five-hour window, vary by model and task, and may have weekly limits. Cloud tasks use more than local messages. Pro has no five-hour limit. API-key use is billed per token. |
| Devin | $0–20 | $280 | Cognition publishes no figure for the Free quota. Paid plans include a usage allowance; past it, extra usage is billed in dollars at API pricing. ACUs now apply only to Enterprise, at the rate in the order form. |
| Bolt.new | $0–25 | $150 | 1M tokens a month goes fast on complex apps, and free tokens don't roll over. A free site that exceeds the hosting limit goes offline for the rest of the month. Pro is $25/mo billed monthly or $18/mo billed yearly, from 10M tokens a month. |
| Lovable | $0–25 | $50+ | 5 daily credits run out fast when iterating on an app. Pro ($25/mo) and Business ($50/mo) each include 100 monthly credits; billed annually they are $21 and $42 a month. |
| MarsCode | — | — | — |
The sticker price is rarely the full story. Here are the costs that don't show up on pricing pages.
Cline, Aider, and Gemini CLI shift costs to API providers. A typical coding session with Claude Sonnet costs $0.50–$5 per session depending on context size. Heavy Cline users report $50–100/month in API costs. Aider with local models (Ollama) is truly free but quality drops significantly.
Cursor, Windsurf and Augment Code include a usage allowance rather than a fixed number of requests. Cursor's free Hobby plan lists "Limited Agent requests"; Windsurf's Free plan has "a light quota to code with agents"; Augment Code's Standard plan includes $20 of usage a month. Windsurf says usage per message "varies based on the model used, the task size and complexity, and the reasoning required."
Large codebases may not fit in context. IDE tools typically support 32K–200K tokens of context. Claude Code and Gemini CLI support 1M tokens. Smaller context = lower quality suggestions on complex projects.
Cursor and Windsurf let you choose models. GitHub Copilot is moving toward model choice. Cloud agents (Codex, Devin) lock you into their provider's models. BYOK tools (Cline, Aider) offer maximum model flexibility.
All cloud-based tools send your code to external servers. Cline, Aider, and Gemini CLI with local models are the only fully private options. Cloud agents may process code on servers with varying data retention policies.
The AI coding market has been in flux. Here are the pricing changes we've tracked. See full change timeline for all tracked changes.
| Date | Vendor | Change | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| effective Oct 14, 2026 | OpenAI Codex | ChatGPT and Codex keep running. Only the GPT-5.5 model retires from ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex on all plans on 2026-10-14: OpenAI names GPT-6 Sol as the replacement on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu plans and GPT-6 Luna on Free and Go plans. The OpenAI API is not affected. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| discovered Sep 3, 2026 · effective date unknown | Lovable | The free tier now includes 20 Cloud credits in addition to the 5 daily (up to 30/month) build credits, and 4 credits for AI features. Unconfirmed. We could not check this change against an archived copy of Lovable's page, so it does not count toward the rating. Source ↗ | LOW |
| effective Jul 10, 2026 | Amazon Kiro | Kiro added a Pro Max plan at $100 per user a month with 5,000 credits, between Pro+ and Power. It first appears on kiro.dev/pricing between the 2026-06-03 and 2026-07-10 captures. Source ↗ | LOW |
| effective Jun 24, 2026 | GitHub Copilot | GitHub limited Copilot Free and Copilot Student to auto model selection, so Free users can no longer choose which model answers. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jun 18, 2026 | Google Gemini Code Assist | Google stopped serving Gemini Code Assist for individuals, its free tier, on 2026-06-18. The IDE extensions and Gemini CLI no longer accept Login with Google for the individuals, Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra tiers. Google stopped selling new Standard and Enterprise subscriptions on 2026-10-09. Existing subscribers can add licenses until 2027-01-31. Annual subscriptions can auto-renew until 2027-01-31; monthly subscriptions can auto-renew until 2027-12-31. Agentic coding assistance is now available through Antigravity, included in Gemini Enterprise editions. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Jun 18, 2026 | Gemini CLI | Gemini CLI stopped accepting Login with Google for personal accounts on 2026-06-18, which ended the personal-account free tier of 60 requests a minute and 1,000 a day. It still runs with a Gemini API key, Vertex AI, or a Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licence. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jun 3, 2026 | Amazon Kiro | Kiro stopped giving new users 500 bonus credits on sign-up, usable within 30 days, and now credits $20 toward the first paid plan instead. The change falls between the 2026-05-02 and 2026-06-03 captures of kiro.dev/pricing. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jun 2, 2026 | Windsurf | Cognition renamed Windsurf Devin Desktop. Existing Windsurf users kept their plans and prices. Source ↗ | LOW |
| effective Jun 1, 2026 | GitHub Copilot | GitHub retired premium requests and now bills every Copilot plan in GitHub AI Credits. Copilot Free kept 2,000 code completions a month, and its 50 chat and agent requests a month became an allowance of AI credits. Plan prices did not change: Pro at $10 a month now includes $15 of usage and Pro+ at $39 includes $70, and the new Max plan is $100 with $200. 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 (2026-06-17). 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 reopened sign-ups for Copilot Student, Pro, Pro+ and Max from 2026-06-17 ("We're reopening sign-ups for GitHub Copilot Student, Pro, Pro+, and Max plans gradually over the next couple of weeks"), and its changelog post for this change is marked Retired. 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 14, 2026 | Devin | Cognition retired Devin's Core and Team plans and introduced Free, Pro, Max, Teams and Enterprise; Core users moved to the Free plan. Usage past a paid plan's allowance is billed in dollars, and only Enterprise still uses ACUs. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| discovered Apr 12, 2026 · effective date unknown | 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 ↗ | 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 4, 2026 | Claude Code | No longer in force (2026-05-13). From noon Pacific on 2026-04-04, Claude subscription limits stopped covering third-party harnesses such as OpenClaw. That usage had to be paid for as extra usage, billed separately from the subscription. No longer in force from 2026-05-13, when Anthropic let third-party apps draw on Claude subscriptions again. The separate Agent SDK credit it announced for 2026-06-15 was paused that day: "For now, nothing has changed: Claude Agent SDK, claude -p, and third-party app usage still draw from your subscription's usage limits." Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 2, 2026 | OpenAI Codex | OpenAI added Codex-only seats for ChatGPT Business and Enterprise workspaces, with no fixed seat fee, no rate limits and usage billed on token consumption, and cut ChatGPT Business's annual price from $25 to $20 per seat. Standard Business seats, which include Codex with usage limits, continued. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Mar 19, 2026 | Windsurf | Windsurf replaced credits-based pricing with daily/weekly quotas (Mar 19, 2026). New tiers: Pro $20/mo (was $15), Teams $40/user/month, Max $200/month. Free tier changed from flexible credits to hard quotas. Existing Pro subscribers grandfathered at $15/mo Source ↗ | 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 Oct 1, 2025 | Augment Code | Shifted from per-seat subscription to credit-based consumption model Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jun 16, 2025 | Cursor | Cursor moved Pro from 500 requests a month to usage-based pricing and introduced a $200/month Ultra tier. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 3, 2025 | Devin | Launched $20/month Core plan with pay-as-you-go ACU pricing, down from previous $500/month-only Team plan Source ↗ Superseded by our Apr 14, 2026 record | HIGH |
| effective Feb 25, 2025 | Google Gemini Code Assist | Google announced a public preview of Gemini Code Assist for individuals, a free version of its coding assistant powered by Gemini 2.0, with up to 180,000 code completions a month, in VS Code, JetBrains IDEs and GitHub. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Dec 18, 2024 | 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 Jun 1, 2026 record | HIGH |
Cursor Pro or Windsurf Pro (both $20/mo). Cursor has more mature multi-model support. Cascade was removed from Devin Desktop in version 3.9.19 on 2026-09-08. Devin Local is now the only agent. Or save $10: GitHub Copilot Pro at $10/mo covers most needs.
GitHub Copilot Business ($19/seat) is cheapest. Gemini Code Assist is no longer sold to new customers. Cursor Teams is $40/user/month. Devin Desktop (Windsurf) Teams is $80/month plus $40/month per full dev seat.
Cline (VS Code), Aider (CLI), or Gemini CLI. All free and open-source, and all bring your own key: Gemini CLI has run on a Gemini API key since Google stopped personal-account sign-in on 2026-06-18.
Claude Code (Max $100–200/mo) or OpenAI Codex (via ChatGPT Plus $20/mo). Both can work autonomously across files. Devin ($20/mo + ACUs) for fully delegated engineering tasks.
Bolt.new (1M free tokens/month) or Lovable (5 daily credits). Both generate full-stack apps from natural language. Bolt.new has more generous free tier; Lovable's Business plan is $50/month.
GitHub Copilot — Copilot Student is free with an allowance of GitHub AI Credits, available to verified students. Verified teachers and maintainers of popular open source projects may be eligible for free Copilot Pro access.