Best free alternatives to GitHub Copilot

• Tabnine
  • Runs privately locally on your PC (very high spikes in CPU usage!), but there’s a cloud option too
  • Completions are instant on every key stroke
  • Completions are short (current word or line only)
  • Can be configured to work inline
  • Supports many more IDEs than Copilot
  • Frequently gets completions wrong
  • Has a “team” option
• Copilot
  • Runs in cloud so no CPU usage (also no privacy)
  • Completions are pretty quick though not usually instant
  • Completions are less frequent but much much longer (like several lines)
  • Supports a limited number of IDEs
  • Completions are initially impressive, but become less useful over time
• Snippets
  • Annoying
  • A good snippet is much more useful

• Intellicode
  • Sometimes the suggestions are useless, sometimes they contain bugs but many times they are exactly what I wanted to write or it’s faster to adjust the suggested code than to write it from scratch
• Tabnine
  • Easy to install and try out and then uninstall again
  • Worth a try, it’s a very nicely designed product
  • Not useful enough to one Reddit user
• Kite
  • Prefered by one Reddit user
  • Hasn’t had any updates for almost 10 months
• Intellicode
  • Recommended to classmates by one Reddit user
• Github Copilot
  • Better than Tabnine according to one Reddit user
  • Not ready for public use according to one Reddit user

• No, GitHub Copilot will not replace programmers
  • A programmer’s main job isn’t writing code but understanding the business requirements and turning it into an abstract form that can then be translated into code
  • Understanding what the code Co-Pilot is giving you - does it really do what you want to do? Does it need anything else? Is there a better way of doing this? - is something only a trained programmer can do
  • AI code has legal implications in terms of intellectual property and certain FOSS and proprietary licenses
  • AI will take over the menial tasks and assist humans, but a real programmer should understand and learn from the code, and then improve/adapt it to their needs
  • Code is no longer the issue; we should be concerned about models and requirements instead
  • Even if someone could generate a generic application with this, they still need programmers to make the code do the more nuanced and specific behaviors that can’t be interpreted by AI
  • Code represents the details of the requirements and these details cannot be ignored or abstracted, they have to be specified
  • The level of abstraction of our language will continue to increase and that the number of domain-specific languages will continue to grow, but this will not eliminate code
  • Code is really the language in which we ultimately express the requirements; there will always be code and there will always be developers
• Yes, eventually AI like GitHub Copilot will replace programmers
  • It was trained on GitHub code and is already quite good
  • Developers will help it improve by letting it watch them code when using the plugin

None

• CodeGenX
  • Mentioned as an open-source alternative to GitHub Copilot
  • Reddit user has been using it for a while and found it useful
• Tabnine
  • Reddit user found it useful and provides genuinely useful suggestions compared to normal autocompletions
• Good code, following general patterns and using good names
  • Reddit user found Copilot picked up code quickly and generated useful snippets
• End of line completion and one line completion
  • Reddit user only uses Copilot for this
• FOSS
  • Reddit user mentioned wanting to see some FOSS

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What are the top 5 free alternatives to GitHub Copilot?

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What are the top 5 open source alternatives to GitHub Copilot?

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What are the features of Captain Stack?

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What is the pricing model for Tabnine?

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What are the unique features of Rubberduck compared to other alternatives?

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What are the limitations of GPilot compared to GitHub Copilot?

• Tabnine
  • AI models are only trained on permissive open source licensed code
  • Ability to host and train your own AI models enables collaborative autocompletion across IDEs
  • Offers midline suggestions as you type
  • Pro account starting at $12/month per user (free trial available)
  • Enterprise account pricing is available on quote
• Captain Stack
  • Open-source VSCode plugin
  • Sends search query to Google, retrieves StackOverflow and Github Gist answers, and auto-completes them
  • Free
• GPT-Code-Clippy (GPT-CC)
  • Open source version of GitHub Copilot, a language model (based on GPT-3, called GPT-Codex)
  • Only available as a plugin for VSCode
  • Free
• Second Mate
  • Open-source imitation of GitHub Copilot
  • Uses EleutherAI GPT-Neo-2.7B (via Huggingface Model Hub) for Emacs
  • Free
• IntelliCode
  • Experimental AI coding assistant trained on a subset of GitHub projects
  • Available for Visual Studio only
  • Has team completion feature
• Code Whisperer
  • Launched by Amazon
  • Trained on billions of lines of code drawn from open source repositories, internal Amazon repositories, API documentation, and forums
  • Available in its preview version only upon signup and can be installed on any IDE that supports AWS IDE tools
  • Free (in preview)
• Google ML-enhanced code completion
  • Google Transformer-based hybrid semantic ML code completion
  • Available only to developers working at Google itself
• YouCompleteMe
  • Free autocompletion library for Vim
  • Setup is lengthy and complicated if you plan to code in more than one language
  • Free
• Kite (not maintained)
  • Unavailable for download and is not maintained

• AIM Daily XO
  • Newsletter subscription subject to AIM Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions
• Asm-Dude
  • Visual studio extension for assembly syntax highlighting and code completion
  • Supports syntax highlighting and descriptions, documentation links, code completion, code folding, structure help and label analysis
• Atom
  • Open-source text and source code editor
  • Supports plugins written in JavaScript and embedded Git Control
  • Customisable in CSS, HTML, and JavaScript
• Captain Stack
  • Alternative to GitHub Copilot’s code suggestion
  • Sends your search query to Google and retrieves StackOverflow answers and auto-completes
  • Works with VSCode, set up as a VSCode extension
• Clara
  • Alternative to Github Copilot for VSCode
  • Supports close to 50 programming languages
  • Provides snippers at an instant
• GPT-Code-Clippy
  • Open-source version of GitHub Copilot
  • Language model fine-tuned on publicly available code from Github
  • Based on GPT-3
  • VSCode extension available
  • GPT-CC models are fine-tuned versions of GPT-2 and GPT-Neo
• Kite
  • AI-powered programming assistant
  • Helps developers write Python code inside JupyterLab
  • Line-of-Code Completions powered by machine learning models trained on the entire open-source code universe
  • Instant documentation for symbols underneath the cursor
• Second Mate
  • Open-source, mini imitation of Github Copilot
  • Uses EleutherAI GPT-Neo- 2.7 billion parameters
• YouCompleteMe
  • Code completion, comprehension and refactoring engine for Vim
  • Contains an identifier-based engine that works with every programming language
  • Provides native semantic code completion for C, C++, Objective-C, CUDA using a powerful clangd-based engine

• Tabnine
  • They offer a surprising amount of autocompletion, having provided more than just a single line and code suggestion based on previous code, almost to a natural/human language to code.
  • Great if you mostly use Visual Studio Code, not sure how it is outside of it.
  • Good amount of languages supported
  • Probs the easiest to get up and running
• UPG Code Generator
  • A tool for creating and editing programs given a target (language) and a description.
  • Can execute non-supported targets by telling the CLI what command to run to execute the output file.
• GPT-Code-Clippy (GPT-CC)
  • Open source version of GitHub Copilot, a language model based on GPT-3, called GPT-Codex, that is fine-tuned on publicly available code from GitHub.
  • Can often find others just by searching “GPT”, at least on VSCode marketplace.

• Asm-Dude
  • Visual Studio addon that highlights assembly syntax and completes code in assembly files and disassembly windows
  • Syntax highlighting and descriptions, documentation links, code completion, code folding, structure help, and label analysis are important features
• Atom
  • Open-source text and source code editor developed by GitHub
  • Supports JavaScript plugins and embedded Git Control
  • CSS, HTML, and JavaScript can be used to customise it
• Captain Stack
  • Sends your search query to Google, which returns StackOverflow answers and auto-complete suggestions
  • Only works with VSCode and is set up as a VSCode extension
• Clara
  • VSCode plugin that replaces Github Copilot
  • Supports around 50 programming languages and provides developers with snippers right away
• GPT-Code-Clippy
  • Open-source version of GitHub Copilot
  • Language model based on Github code that is publicly available
  • Based on the GPT-3 protocol

• GPilot
  • an almost free alternative to GitHub Copilot
  • uses GPT3 API
  • available on GitHub
  • still far from being able to replace Copilot, as it needs to suggest/auto-complete code as you type and provide multiple solutions to choose from
• Rubberduck
  • available in the VS Code extension store
  • does what GPilot does and a lot more
• Codex Beta Models (e.g. Cushman)
  • designed specifically for code completion
  • currently free
• GPilot
  • $0.002 per 1K tokens

💭  Looking into

What are the best free alternatives to GitHub Copilot?