Best alternatives to GitHub Copilot

Tools that overlap with GitHub Copilot on what it does, ranked by editor's pick first. Each has been tested first-hand.

Anthropic's terminal-first AI coding agent — best-in-class for long autonomous tasks and tool use.

VS Code fork with the best Tab completion in the business and a competent Composer agent.

Open-source CLI coding agent — bring your own API key and get a power-user terminal workflow.

VS Code fork with the Cascade agent and an unusually generous free tier.