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:discovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknown — 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 ↗
increaseddiscovered 2026-09-12 · effective date unknownlow impact
The free tier now includes access to Haiku 4.5, GPT-5 mini, and more, and access to the Copilot CLI. The pricing for Pro is $10/month with $15 monthly total credits, Pro+ is $39/month with $70 monthly total credits, and Max is $100/month with $200 monthly total credits. The page also mentions Business and Enterprise plans with different pricing and features. Source ↗
restructureddiscovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknownhigh impact
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 ↗
restrictedeffective 2026-04-22high 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No longer in force (2026-09-01).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 ↗
restrictedeffective 2026-04-20high impact
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 ↗
restrictedeffective 2026-04-10medium 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 ↗
not_a_free_offer Tier "Paid" is no free offer at all.
All Free Alternatives (4)
3 of these carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold; their order rotates daily. 0 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.
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.
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 date we last verified it. Of those, 3 carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold, so they are listed in an order that rotates daily, 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, discovered 2026-08-28: 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: https://github.com/features/copilot
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 8 recorded pricing changes. The most recent was discovered 2026-09-12: The free tier now includes access to Haiku 4.5, GPT-5 mini, and more, and access to the Copilot CLI. The pricing for Pro is $10/month with $15 monthly total credits, Pro+ is $39/month with $70 monthly total credits, and Max is $100/month with $200 monthly total credits. The page also mentions Business and Enterprise plans with different pricing and features. Source: https://github.com/features/copilot
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