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Best Free Alternatives to GitHub Copilot Business

Stop paying $19/user/mo. Discover professional-grade tools that won't break your budget.

Category: AI Development / AutocompleteVerified for 2025

Top Recommended Replacements

Codeium

FREE

Best 'Plug & Play' Alternative

Why we like it

A direct, drop-in replacement for the Copilot plugin; faster autocomplete speeds; generous free tier for individuals; supports 70+ languages; offers its own AI-native IDE called 'Windsurf' which is arguably superior to VS Code.

Keep in mind

The 'Enterprise' features (self-hosted) are paid, similar to Copilot.

Continue

FREE

Best for 'BYO Model'

Why we like it

An open-source extension for VS Code/JetBrains that lets you bring *any* model; plug in 'DeepSeek Coder' (cheaper/better than GPT-4), Claude 3.5 Sonnet, or run local models via Ollama for 100% air-gapped privacy.

Keep in mind

Requires you to bring your own API key or set up a local model runner (Ollama).

DeepSeek Coder

FREE

Best Intelligence Engine

Why we like it

The current 'SOTA' (State of the Art) for open coding models; beats GPT-4 Turbo on HumanEval benchmarks; massive 128k context window; you can run it inside 'Continue' for pennies compared to Copilot's subscription.

Keep in mind

It is a model, not a plugin (you need 'Continue' or 'Cursor' to use it).

Amazon Q Developer

FREE

Best for Corporate / AWS

Why we like it

Formerly 'CodeWhisperer'; the free tier is incredibly generous (includes security scans and chat); deeply integrated into AWS (can write CloudFormation/Lambda code better than Copilot).

Keep in mind

Heavier focus on AWS; less 'general purpose' creative coding than Copilot.

Tabnine

FREE

Best for Privacy

Why we like it

The original AI coder; runs entirely locally on your laptop (no code leaves your machine); offers an 'Enterprise' version that can be trained specifically on *your* company's private repo patterns.

Keep in mind

The local model is 'dumber' than massive cloud models like GPT-4.

Cursor

FREE

Best UX / IDE

Why we like it

A fork of VS Code with AI baked into the core, not just a plugin; 'Cmd+K' to refactor entire files is unmatched; supports 'Tab' to complete diffs; free tier is very capable.

Keep in mind

Eventually requires a $20/mo subscription for heavy use of premium models (Claude 3.5 Sonnet).

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