Compare 4 free alternatives to GitHub Copilot for AI Coding. Every one of their free tier limits side by side, with the read and catalogue dates we hold.

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Best GitHub Copilot Alternatives with Free Tiers (2026)

4 free alternatives in AI Coding. Sorted by pricing stability.

Current GitHub Copilot Situation

Risk Level: caution
Why: effective 2026-06-24 — GitHub limited Copilot Free and Copilot Student to auto model selection, so Free users can no longer choose which model answers. Source ↗
Category: AI Coding
Pricing Page: github.com/features/copilot

Recent Pricing Changes (8)

restricted effective 2026-06-24 medium impact
GitHub limited Copilot Free and Copilot Student to auto model selection, so Free users can no longer choose which model answers. Source ↗
restructured effective 2026-06-01 high impact
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 ↗
restricted effective 2026-04-22 high impact
No longer in force (2026-09-01).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 ↗
restricted effective 2026-04-20 high impact
No longer in force (2026-06-17).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 ↗
restricted effective 2026-04-10 medium impact
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 ↗

See GitHub Copilot's full history →

Upcoming Changes (1)

These are announced changes that have not taken effect yet, listed soonest first.

deprecated effective 2026-12-14 low impact
GitHub Copilot keeps running. On December 14, 2026, GitHub deprecates six models across all Copilot experiences, including Copilot Chat, inline edits, ask and agent modes, and code completions: Claude Fable 5 (GitHub's suggested alternative is Claude Fable 5.2), Claude Haiku 4.5 (Claude Haiku 5.5), Gemini 3.8 Flash (Gemini 4 Hydrogen), Gemini 4 Argon (Gemini 4 Carbon), Grok 4.6 (Grok 4.7) and Kimi K3 (alternative to be announced). Claude Haiku 4.5 stays available to individual Copilot subscribers on annual plans. Source ↗

Recommended Migration Targets

These alternatives were identified from GitHub Copilot’s pricing changes as recommended replacements.

Cursor caution 2026-10-12 restructured recommended
Free
AI code editor built on VS Code. Since 2026-10-12, Cursor's pricing docs (cursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing) say: "Cursor is sold as part of The X Subscription, one subscription for Grok, Cursor, and X."
AI Coding Read 2026-11-06 · confirmed 2026-10-03
Profile Compare
Windsurf recommended
Free
Windsurf is now Devin Desktop ("Devin Desktop is the new name for Windsurf."), Cognition's AI IDE. windsurf.com/pricing redirects to devin.ai/pricing, which prices it together with Devin.
AI Coding Read 2026-11-13 · catalogue date 2026-06-25
Profile Compare
−1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 13 consecutive re-check attempts have failed (most recently 2026-11-13 — the page never names Windsurf, on a domain that carries its name), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor.
Cline recommended
Open Source
Open-source autonomous AI coding agent for VS Code. Fully free.
AI Coding Read 2026-10-14 · catalogue date 2026-07-29
Profile
−1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-10-14, could read no amount, tier or rate on the page. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor.
Claude Code recommended
Paid
Agentic coding tool by Anthropic: it reads a codebase, edits files, runs commands and works with development tools, in the terminal, IDEs, a desktop app and the browser. No free plan: "Claude Code is included in all paid plans", and Claude's Free plan does not include it.
AI Coding Read 2026-10-14 · catalogue date 2026-08-17
Profile
not_a_free_offer Tier "Paid" is no free offer at all.

All Free Alternatives (4)

1 of these carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold; their order rotates daily. 2 are demoted with the reason named, and 1 are listed last because they are not generally available or are not a free offer. How we rank.

Cursor caution 2026-10-12 restructured
Free
AI code editor built on VS Code. Since 2026-10-12, Cursor's pricing docs (cursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing) say: "Cursor is sold as part of The X Subscription, one subscription for Grok, Cursor, and X."
AI Coding Read 2026-11-06 · confirmed 2026-10-03
Profile Compare
Windsurf
Free
Windsurf is now Devin Desktop ("Devin Desktop is the new name for Windsurf."), Cognition's AI IDE. windsurf.com/pricing redirects to devin.ai/pricing, which prices it together with Devin.
AI Coding Read 2026-11-13 · catalogue date 2026-06-25
Profile Compare
−1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 13 consecutive re-check attempts have failed (most recently 2026-11-13 — the page never names Windsurf, on a domain that carries its name), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor.
Cline
Open Source
Open-source autonomous AI coding agent for VS Code. Fully free.
AI Coding Read 2026-10-14 · catalogue date 2026-07-29
Profile
−1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-10-14, could read no amount, tier or rate on the page. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor.
Claude Code
Paid
Agentic coding tool by Anthropic: it reads a codebase, edits files, runs commands and works with development tools, in the terminal, IDEs, a desktop app and the browser. No free plan: "Claude Code is included in all paid plans", and Claude's Free plan does not include it.
AI Coding Read 2026-10-14 · catalogue date 2026-08-17
Profile
not_a_free_offer Tier "Paid" is no free offer at all.
Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
date
2026-11-14
query_key
alternative-to:GitHub Copilot
seed
7444fa7f38fce5f1f40c8fd389217df4355d34c99a06803f3e41363e87ee7e18
tie_count
1

Category Trends

See the broader pricing landscape for this category.

↑ AI Coding Pricing Trends

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best free alternatives to GitHub Copilot?
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 4 free alternatives to GitHub Copilot, each listed below with its tier, category and the read and catalogue dates we hold. Of those, 1 carries no recorded demerit, 2 are demoted with the reason named, 1 is listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
Is GitHub Copilot's free tier still available?
GitHub Copilot has a free tier (Free), but it's flagged as "caution" because of one specific recorded change, on 2026-06-24: GitHub limited Copilot Free and Copilot Student to auto model selection, so Free users can no longer choose which model answers. Source: https://github.blog/changelog/2026-06-24-changes-to-model-selection-for-free-and-student-plans/
How many free alternatives to GitHub Copilot exist?
There are 4 free alternatives to GitHub Copilot tracked on AgentDeals across the AI Coding category.
Has GitHub Copilot changed their pricing?
GitHub Copilot has 9 recorded pricing changes. The most recent was on 2026-06-24: GitHub limited Copilot Free and Copilot Student to auto model selection, so Free users can no longer choose which model answers. Source: https://github.blog/changelog/2026-06-24-changes-to-model-selection-for-free-and-student-plans/