Continue vs GitHub Copilot: Which AI Agent Is Better?
An in-depth comparison of Continue and GitHub Copilot across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
An in-depth comparison of Continue and GitHub Copilot across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
Either way, you pay for the model calls. A median coding-agent day on our gateway is 95 requests and 8.6 million tokens. The table prices every step at one model’s rate.
Both run on Standard Compute, where each step goes to the cheapest model that can do it: routine steps go to efficient open models, hard ones to frontier models such as Claude Fable 5.1 or GPT-6 Astra.
| Model | Typical day | Busy day |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $7.34 | $59.10 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $3.67 | $29.55 |
| GPT-6 Luna | $0.23 | $2.43 |
Fixed monthly plans from $19. Eligible new accounts can try $0.25 of compute first, no card. Trial terms
Pick a winner in each category. You can change your vote anytime.
ContinueCopilotChoose Continue if you are developers who want full control over their AI coding assistant. Choose GitHub Copilot if you are teams already in the GitHub ecosystem who want seamless AI integration.
In our editorial scoring, GitHub Copilot leads in 5 of six categories (output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed and ease of use), while Continue leads in 1 (value). On price, Continue runs free (byo api key), no longer maintained and is open source; GitHub Copilot runs free tier / $10–100/mo (ai credits) and is proprietary.
What it costs to run Continue or Copilot
Best API for Continue →
4 options compared, with prices and limits
Best API for Copilot →
5 options compared, with prices and limits
Standard Compute sends each step to the cheapest model that can do it, on providers we vet for price, uptime and speed. Plans start at $19 a month, and eligible new accounts can try $0.25 of compute with no card. Choose your agent below to connect.
See the trial and activation steps →
More on Copilot: Copilot AI Credits Ran Out: What Changed and What to Do · How do I use GitHub Copilot with a flat-rate API through a custom endpoint?
Continue is an open-source (Apache 2.0) AI coding assistant for VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, plus a CLI. It offers chat, autocomplete, and inline editing with full control over which models you use, including local models, cloud APIs, and custom context providers. It is no longer developed: the Continue team joined Cursor, the GitHub repo is read-only, and the last release (2.1.0 for VS Code) shipped in June 2026. The extension still installs and works, but expect no fixes for new models or editor versions.
GitHub Copilot is the most widely-adopted AI coding assistant. It offers inline code suggestions, chat-based assistance, and tight integration with the GitHub ecosystem including pull requests, issues, and Actions. Available in VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, and more.
Continue and Copilot both run on Standard Compute
