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Copilot moved to premium requests with usage billing. Developers on r/GithubCopilot put it bluntly: better functionally, much worse on pricing.
If you want completions without a metered bill, or code that never leaves your network, there are real options.
Prices were checked against each vendor’s own pricing page on 6 September 2026.
The best GitHub Copilot alternatives at a glance
One with the best free tier, one for teams that cannot send code out, and one that costs nothing at all.
Amazon Q Developer
Best free tier, then $19
Free / $19 per user monthlyTabnine
Runs inside your own network
$39 per user monthlyTabby
Self-hosted and open source
Free, open sourceAmazon Q Developer
The strongest free tier
The free tier is unusually generous for something that includes an agent rather than just autocomplete, and it works in VS Code, JetBrains and the terminal. Pro is $19 per user a month, which raises the request limits and adds IP indemnity, admin controls and the Java and .NET upgrade tooling. You do not need to run anything on AWS to use it.
Free tier: Free tier: yes. Limited agentic requests a month, with access to current Claude models, in the IDE or the CLI.
Tabnine
For code that cannot leave
The expensive one, and the only one here that answers a hard compliance requirement. Tabnine deploys as SaaS, in your own VPC, on premises, or fully air-gapped, so the code never crosses your boundary. Chat and completions are grounded in your codebase, and it connects to Jira for context. Worth the price only if the deployment model is why you are shopping.
Free tier: Free tier: no. Billed annually, quoted per user.
Tabby
Self-host it yourself
A self-hosted completion server you run on your own machine or a GPU box in the office, with extensions for VS Code, JetBrains and Vim. No telemetry and no per-seat billing, which is why small teams with a spare GPU keep choosing it. You are the one maintaining it, and completion quality tracks whichever open model you load.
Free tier: Free tier: yes. Open source, self-hosted, no account.
Refact.ai
Open core, agentic
Goes further than completion: it runs an agent that edits across files and can be pointed at your own models. The self-hosted build is free and open source, so it fits the same brief as Tabby with more capability and more setup. The hosted plan exists if you would rather not run the server.
Free tier: Free tier: yes. The self-hosted version is open source; the hosted service is paid.
Twinny
Free, local, private
A VS Code extension that gives you completion and chat from a model running on your own laptop. No account, no key, no network call. On a machine with enough memory it is genuinely usable for everyday completion, and it is the only option here that costs nothing at all, including tokens.
Free tier: Free tier: yes. Free extension; models run locally through Ollama or llama.cpp.
Qodo Gen
Tests and code review
Comes at the problem from the other end: instead of writing code faster, it writes the tests and reviews the pull request. The agentic review runs against your own rules and posts findings on the PR. Pair it with a free completion tool and you cover more of the workflow than Copilot does alone.
Free tier: Free tier: 14-day trial with unlimited reviews and credits, then credit-based plans.
| # | Tool | Best for | Free tier | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Amazon Q Developer | The strongest free tier | Yes, agentic requests included | Free / $19 per user monthly |
| 02 | Tabnine | For code that cannot leave | No, annual contract | $39 per user monthly |
| 03 | Tabby | Self-host it yourself | Yes, fully free | Free, open source |
| 04 | Refact.ai | Open core, agentic | Yes, self-hosted free | Free, open source, plus paid cloud |
| 05 | Twinny | Free, local, private | Yes, fully free | Free, open source |
| 06 | Qodo Gen | Tests and code review | 14-day trial | Free trial, then credit-based |
Why people are leaving Copilot in 2026
The complaint has changed. It used to be quality. Now it is the bill.
Copilot moved to a model where heavier work consumes premium requests and overage is charged on top of the seat price. A thread on r/GithubCopilot in August 2026 summed it up in one line: better functionally, but much worse on usage pricing. Another reply put it more plainly: you need to optimise your usage, because Copilot charges API prices.
That is a real change in what you are buying. A flat seat price is a budget line. A metered agent is a variable cost that scales with how much your team actually uses it, which is exactly when you want it most.
The second thread, from May 2026 and running to 134 replies, asks the obvious follow-up: what is the current best alternative. The answers below are the ones that keep coming up.
GitHub Copilot alternatives compared
Cheapest paid tier and what the free tier really allows, checked against each vendor’s own page on 6 September 2026.
Free does not mean the same thing twice
“Free alternative to GitHub Copilot” is the most common search on this topic, and it hides three different offers.
Free tier of a paid service. Amazon Q Developer is the strongest example: a real agent, real models, capped requests. You are still sending code to a vendor, and you will hit a ceiling.
Free and open source, self-hosted. Tabby and Refact.ai cost nothing in licence but cost you a server and an afternoon. In exchange, no code leaves your network and there is no per-seat maths as the team grows.
Free and local. Twinny runs the model on your own laptop through Ollama. Nothing leaves the machine, nothing is metered, and quality depends on how much memory you can spare.
Pick the one that matches your actual constraint. If the constraint is budget, take the free tier. If it is compliance, take self-hosted or local.
Where your code goes, and why it matters more now
Agents read far more of your repository than autocomplete ever did. That changes the risk profile even when the vendor has not changed a word of its policy.
Three questions to put to any vendor before a rollout. Are code snippets retained, and for how long? Are they used to train models, and can that be switched off at the organisation level rather than per developer? Is there a documented zero-retention mode?
Copilot Business and Enterprise answer these reasonably well, and so does Amazon Q Developer, which also carries IP indemnity on the paid tier. If you cannot get satisfactory answers, self-hosting is not paranoia, it is the cheaper path through a procurement review.
It is also worth separating two things people merge: the assistant and the platform. If your concern is GitHub itself rather than the assistant, changing your completion tool does not address it.
What to check before you switch
Completion quality is the thing everyone tests and the thing that matters least, because the gap between the top tools is now small. Check these instead.
Does it index the repository or just the open file? This is the single biggest difference in day-to-day usefulness on a large codebase.
Which IDEs are properly supported? Plenty of tools ship a strong VS Code extension and a neglected JetBrains one. Test in the editor your team actually uses.
How is it billed at the edge? Seats, requests, credits or tokens. Each fails differently in a busy month, and the failure mode is the number you should be budgeting.
How we test and price these tools
Every price on this page was read from the vendor’s own pricing page in a browser on 6 September 2026, not copied from another round-up. Several published lists still quote Tabnine’s old individual plan, which is no longer what the pricing page shows.
For coding assistants we separate the licence from the running cost. A free extension that needs a paid model behind it is not free, and a self-hosted tool costs hardware and maintenance even when the software costs nothing. Both are stated plainly on each card.
We read current threads on r/GithubCopilot for each tool, so the complaints here are from this year. No vendor pays for a place on this list.
GitHub Copilot alternatives FAQs
Taken from Google’s results and current threads on r/GithubCopilot.
How we test01 Are there free alternatives to GitHub Copilot?
Yes, three kinds. Amazon Q Developer has a free tier with real agentic requests. Tabby and Refact.ai are open source and free if you self-host. Twinny is free and runs the model on your own laptop, so it costs nothing at all, including tokens.
02 Is anything better than GitHub Copilot?
Not across the board. Copilot is still the best-integrated assistant on GitHub itself. Amazon Q Developer gives more away free, Tabnine is the only one that will run air-gapped, and Qodo Gen is better at tests and code review. Pick on your constraint rather than a ranking.
03 What is the best free Copilot alternative for VS Code?
Amazon Q Developer if you want the strongest capability at no cost, since its free tier includes agentic requests and current Claude models. Twinny if the code must not leave your machine, because it runs a local model through Ollama and needs no account.
04 Which alternative can I self-host?
Tabby and Refact.ai. Both are open source and run on your own hardware, so no code crosses your network boundary and there is no per-seat billing. Tabnine offers on-premises and air-gapped deployment as a paid product if you would rather buy it than run it.
05 Why did my Copilot bill go up?
Because heavier work now consumes premium requests, and going over the included allowance is charged on top of the seat price. Agentic tasks consume far more than autocomplete. Check your usage dashboard before assuming the seat price is the whole cost.
06 Does Copilot train on my code?
For paid Business and Enterprise plans, GitHub states that your code is not used to train models. Policies differ by plan and by vendor, so ask three specific questions of anyone you are evaluating: what is retained, for how long, and whether training can be disabled organisation-wide rather than per developer.
07 Can I use these on a laptop with no GPU?
The cloud ones, yes: Amazon Q Developer, Tabnine and Qodo all run their models remotely. Local tools like Twinny need memory more than a graphics card, and a small model on 16 GB is usable. Tabby is best given a shared GPU box rather than a laptop.
Browse every alternatives guide, or start with the dev tools category.