Standard Compute

Best API & Subscription for Continue

Continue splits into two usage shapes with different right answers. Autocomplete fires constantly with small requests — a local model (Ollama) handles it free and fast, and Continue supports that natively. Chat and inline edits want stronger models: OpenCode Go covers open-weight value, GitHub Copilot Pro covers cheap frontier. If you run Continue's chat/edit heavily all day and want one bill for everything, Standard Compute has no usage limits at a flat price.

Plan facts verified 2026-07-17
Cheapest tokens

A local model for autocomplete (genuinely free after setup) plus OpenCode Go for chat — Continue's config supports the split cleanly.

If you need no usage limits / always-on

Standard Compute for the chat/edit workload — constant small requests plus big-context edits are a bad fit for windowed quotas.

Every option for Continue, compared honestly

OptionPriceThe honest take
Local model (Ollama / vLLM)Hardware + electricityGenuinely unlimited tokens once you own the GPU — but you run the infra, and open-weight quality caps out below frontier. The honest 'truly unlimited' baseline to compare hosted plans against.
OpenCode Go$10/mo ($5 first month)Best raw open-weight value: ~$60/mo of usage for $10 (~6x). Capped by $12/5h + $30/week windows. Works with any agent.
GitHub Copilot Pro$10 / $39Cheap closed-model access (GPT/Claude/Gemini) with monthly premium-request allowances. Best if you want frontier models cheaply and lightly.
Standard ComputeUNLIMITED$39 / $89 / $249No usage limits: no token meter, no 5-hour or weekly windows — and unlike the open-weight-only plans here, smart routing reaches the full frontier (Claude, GPT, Gemini class). Extreme sustained load is paced smoothly, not cut off. Wins when your agent runs all day or needs frontier quality that capped open-weight plans can't match.
OpenRouterPay-as-you-go400+ models, ~5.5% fee, no markup on inference. Maximum flexibility, not a subscription — bill scales with usage, so heavy agents get expensive.

Competitor prices from their public pages as of 2026-07-17. Spot an error? tell us — accuracy is the point.

Disclosure: this guide is maintained by Standard Compute. We're one option among many above — genuinely the best fit only when your Continue runs heavy or always-on and the capped plans would stop it. For light or predictable use, the value multipliers above are often cheaper, and we say so.

2-min Continue setup →All flat-rate plans compared →The cheapest-tokens math →