${ai_tool.title} logo$

GitHub Copilot

Microsoft and OpenAI's AI coding assistant integrated in VS Code, JetBrains and more. Most widely used AI coding tool for professional developers.

Written by Claude claude-sonnet-4-6

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot is the AI coding assistant from Microsoft (owner of GitHub) and OpenAI. It was one of the first major AI coding tools to achieve mainstream adoption and is now used by millions of developers. Copilot integrates into the most popular development environments — VS Code, JetBrains, Vim, Neovim — and offers real-time code completions, chat features and agentic capabilities.

How does Copilot work?

GitHub Copilot is primarily trained on public code from GitHub — billions of lines of open-source code in virtually every programming language. When a developer types, Copilot analyzes the context (current file, open files, comments, function names) and suggests code completions — from a single line to entire functions or classes.

Copilot Chat (available in VS Code and as a web interface) provides a conversational interface for asking questions, explaining code, generating tests and debugging. Copilot Workspace (newer) provides agentic features where multi-step tasks are performed based on a description.

Core features

Inline code completion — real-time suggestions while typing
Copilot Chat — conversational AI in the editor
Copilot Workspace — agentic task execution for entire features
Multi-IDE — VS Code, JetBrains, Vim, GitHub.com
PR summaries — automatic descriptions of pull requests
Code review — AI feedback on submitted code

Advantages

Deepest integration with the GitHub ecosystem
Broad language support (Python, JS, TypeScript, Go, Ruby, Java, C#, C++ and more)
Free for students and open-source developers
Good enterprise features including privacy controls

Disadvantages

Training data controversies: trained on code without explicit consent from authors
Slightly less codebase-aware than Cursor
Enterprise features require more expensive subscription

Pricing

Copilot Individual costs €10/month or €100/year. Copilot Business costs €19/user/month. Free for students and open-source maintainers.

Who is it for?

GitHub Copilot is ideal for developers already deeply embedded in the GitHub ecosystem, for companies wanting enterprise-grade AI coding tools, and for anyone looking for a broadly supported, proven AI coding assistant.

Other tools in this category

Amazon Q Developer

Amazon Q Developer is AWS's AI coding assistant for IDEs and the AWS console, helping you write, debug, and secure code with deep awareness of AWS services.

Claude Code

Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding assistant that lives in your terminal, understanding entire codebases and autonomously executing complete multi-file development tasks end to end.

Cursor

Cursor is an AI-first code editor built on VS Code, combining chat, inline edits, and an autonomous agent — the most popular AI coding environment of 2024-2025.

Devin (Cognition AI)

Devin by Cognition AI is an autonomous AI software engineer that independently fixes bugs, builds features and opens pull requests, ideal for well-defined, testable development tasks.

JetBrains AI Assistant

JetBrains AI Assistant is a deeply integrated AI assistant in all JetBrains IDEs that understands your entire project via the PSI tree, for generating code, refactoring and writing tests.

Replit AI

AI-integrated online code editor and deployment platform. Generate, edit and deploy apps directly from the browser without setup.

Sourcegraph Cody

Sourcegraph Cody is an AI coding assistant that uses your entire codebase across multiple repositories as context to answer questions and generate code.

Tabnine

Tabnine is an AI code-completion assistant that gives real-time suggestions, supports over 80 languages and can run entirely locally or on-premise for maximum privacy.

Windsurf (Codeium)

AI code editor from Codeium with strong agentic features. Known for the 'Flows' feature that combines human and AI steps.