Continue
FreeA Copilot replacement inside VS Code and JetBrains, with the model your choice
An AI coding extension for VS Code and JetBrains offering inline autocomplete, chat-driven rewriting of selected code, and questions scoped to a file or the repository. The model is entirely yours to configure — a small local model for completion and a large cloud model for chat, via Ollama, LM Studio or any provider API.
Why we picked it
Apache-2.0, 35,900 stars.
Copilot is a subscription and Microsoft picks the model. Continue hands both back: the extension is open source and free, and which model it talks to is a line in your config.
There is a useful division of labour. Inline completion wants low latency and short context, so a few-billion-parameter code model on local Ollama is enough and costs nothing; chat and refactoring want reasoning, so a cloud API billed per token handles those. Both are named separately in the same config file.
Cline, listed here, is agent-shaped — hand it a task and it reads, edits and runs commands itself. Continue is closer to classic completion plus chat, with smaller steps and the initiative staying with you.
To be clear about:
- Cloud models bill per token to the provider; going fully local costs nothing and gives up capability.
- First-time setup means writing YAML for models and API keys, which is more than clicking install.
- It has a cloud account system, but you can skip it — supply your own key and stay on local config.