Guides / Comparisons

GitHub Copilot Alternatives: 5 AI Coding Assistants Compared

GitHub Copilot alternatives compared: Cursor, Claude Code, Devin Desktop, Gemini Code Assist and Zed. Pricing as of September 2026 and who each one suits.

Mythex Team · 2026-09-29 · 6 min read

The main alternatives to GitHub Copilot are Cursor (an AI-first code editor with agents), Claude Code (Anthropic's coding agent you run from the terminal, IDE, desktop or web), Devin Desktop (the AI editor formerly called Windsurf), Gemini Code Assist (Google's assistant, free for individuals), and Zed (an open-source editor with AI built in). Copilot is still a sensible default: it's cheap to start, works in many editors and is tied closely to GitHub. Switch when you want a different way of working, not just a different logo.

The short version

Prices are in US dollars as shown on each vendor's page.

Why people look for GitHub Copilot alternatives

As of September 2026, GitHub Copilot has four individual plans: Free ($0, 2,000 completions a month and limited chat and agent use), Pro ($10/month), Pro+ ($39/month) and Max ($100/month). Chat, agents and the CLI draw on monthly GitHub AI Credits, while completions are unlimited on paid plans. Paid plans include pull request reviews and a cloud agent you can assign work to.

That's a lot for $10. People still look elsewhere because:

• They want an editor built around AI, not an assistant added to an existing one.
• They want to delegate bigger tasks and review the result, rather than accept suggestions line by line.
• Credits. Heavy agent use draws down AI Credits, and some developers prefer a different pricing model.
• Model or vendor preference, such as wanting Google's or Anthropic's tools directly.

How we compared

We compared publicly stated features, plans and prices on each vendor's own website, pricing page and docs as of September 2026. We did not benchmark the tools or judge the quality of the code they write, and we left out claims we couldn't confirm on the vendor's own site.

Cursor

Cursor is a desktop code editor built around AI, with agents that can also run in the cloud, in your terminal and from Slack.

Pricing as of September 2026: Hobby is free with limited agent requests. Individual is $20/month with extended agent limits, frontier models, cloud agents and MCP support, with Bugbot code review on usage-based billing. Teams is $40 per user per month and adds central billing, Bugbot reviews, usage analytics, team-wide privacy mode and SAML/OIDC SSO. Enterprise is custom.

Strengths: AI is the centre of the editor, not an add-on; strong agent workflow; choice of models.

Limits: you switch editors, and it costs twice Copilot Pro at entry level.

Choose Cursor if you're willing to move to a new editor for a deeper AI experience. GitHub Copilot vs Cursor goes through the differences one by one.

Claude Code

Claude Code is Anthropic's coding agent. It isn't an editor; you give it tasks like "add tests for this module" and review what it did. As of September 2026 it runs in the terminal, in VS Code and JetBrains, as a desktop app, on the web and mobile, and from Slack and GitHub Actions.

Pricing as of September 2026: included with paid Claude plans. Pro is $20/month ($17 billed annually), Max starts at $100/month, Team Standard seats are $20 per seat per month billed annually ($25 monthly), and Enterprise starts at $20 per seat plus API-rate usage. It isn't included in the free plan.

Strengths: keeps your current editor; suited to larger, multi-step tasks; the same subscription covers Claude's chat apps.

Limits: Anthropic's models only; no free tier.

Choose Claude Code if you want to hand off whole tasks. Many developers run it next to Copilot rather than instead of it.

Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)

Cognition renamed Windsurf to Devin Desktop in June 2026. It's an AI editor that also connects to Devin's cloud agents.

Pricing as of September 2026: Free ($0, light agent quota, unlimited Tab completions); Pro ($20/month, frontier models from several providers and access to Devin's cloud agents); Max ($200/month, much higher quotas); Teams ($80/month for the team plus $40 per full developer seat).

Choose Devin Desktop if you want an AI-first editor with a usable free tier. Our Cursor vs Windsurf vs Claude Code guide compares it with Cursor.

Gemini Code Assist

Gemini Code Assist is the closest like-for-like swap for Copilot: an assistant that plugs into editors you already use. As of September 2026 Google offers a VS Code extension, a JetBrains plugin, Gemini in Android Studio, the open-source Gemini CLI, and a code review agent on GitHub.

Pricing as of September 2026: free for individuals, with no credit card required and daily limits Google lists as 6,000 code-related requests and 240 chat requests. Standard is $19 per user per month and Enterprise $45, with an annual commitment ($22.80 and $54 without one).

Strengths: a generous free tier; stays inside your editor; strong fit for teams on Google Cloud.

Limits: Google's models; business features are geared toward Google Cloud customers.

Choose Gemini Code Assist if you want a free Copilot-style assistant, or your company already runs on Google Cloud.

Zed

Zed is an open-source code editor with AI features, and it's also one of the editors Copilot supports, so it can be a new editor rather than a new assistant.

Pricing as of September 2026: Personal is $0 with 2,000 accepted edit predictions and unlimited use with your own API keys or external agents; Pro is $10/month with unlimited edit predictions and $5 of token credits, then API list price plus 10%; Business is $30 per seat per month.

Choose Zed if you want an open-source editor and prefer paying model providers directly with your own keys.

A different category: AI app builders

If you're looking at Copilot alternatives because you want to build an app but don't write code, none of the tools above is quite right; they all assume you can review and run code. An AI app builder is built for that case. AI app builder vs AI coding assistant explains the split.

Mythex is one: you describe a web app in chat, an agent writes the code in a cloud sandbox with a live preview, adds a dedicated Postgres database if needed, and publishes it. As of September 2026, Free is $0 with 10 credits a day and Pro is $25/month, which adds export and GitHub sync so a developer can continue in Copilot later. Mythex also runs a remote MCP server, so tools like Cursor or Claude can build in a Mythex sandbox (tool calls need Pro). What is MCP explains the protocol, and Mythex vs Cursor compares the approaches.

Which should you choose?

Whatever you pick, review what the AI writes before you merge it. How to review AI-generated code covers what to look for, and Cursor alternatives covers the same field from Cursor's side.