Continue
Open-source AI code assistant for VS Code and JetBrains.
Open-source AI code assistant for VS Code and JetBrains.
Continue is Open-source AI code assistant for VS Code and JetBrains. Free to use.
About Continue
Continue is an open-source AI coding assistant that ships as extensions for VS Code and JetBrains, plus a CLI and a hub for sharing configuration. Unlike closed assistants, Continue lets developers and teams plug in any model, including frontier providers like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google as well as local models via Ollama or vLLM, and configure the autocomplete, chat and agent behaviors through a transparent config file. It supports custom slash commands, context providers that pull in docs, tickets or design files, and reusable Assistants and Rules that can be published to a team hub. Continue is aimed at developers and engineering platforms that want full control over their AI stack and to standardize how the company uses AI in the IDE, and is offered as a free open-source product alongside hosted team and enterprise plans.
Continue pros and cons
Hand-derived from the catalog data, strengths and trade-offs to weigh before signing up.
- Completely free to use, no paid tier required
- Includes an autonomous AI agent for multi-step tasks
- Open source
- Bring your own model
- Custom commands
- Competition is strong in this space, see Cursor and Windsurf for comparison
3 plans from Continue
Pulled from Continue’s public pricing page. Prices may change, verify on the vendor’s site before purchasing.
Starter
Pay-as-you-go agents
- Create and run AI agents
- Integrations: Slack, Sentry, Snyk
- Frontier model credits
- Pay-as-you-go
Team
Most popular for teams
- Includes $10 credits per seat
- Share private agents
- Team agent access control
- SSO with Gmail/GitHub
Company
For larger orgs
- Custom SSO with SAML/OIDC
- Bring-your-own API keys
- Invoicing, SLAs
- Dedicated support
Continue vs Code Editors & Completion
Side-by-side with the top 3 other code editors & completion in this category.
| Picked from the top tools in code editors & completion | Open-source AI code assistant for VS Code and JetBrains. | AI-first code editor built on VS Code. | Agentic IDE from Codeium with the Cascade agent. | Free AI code completion across 70+ editors. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| STARTS AT | Free | $20/mo | $15/mo | Free |
| PRICING | Free | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium |
| AI AGENT | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| EDITOR'S PICK | No | Yes | No | No |
| KEY FEATURES | Open source, Bring your own model, Custom commands | Composer agent, Tab completion, Codebase chat | Cascade agent, Inline edits, Codebase awareness | 70+ IDEs, 40+ languages, Chat |
| BEST FOR | Customized copilots, Local model coding, Context-aware chat | Pair programming, Refactoring, Code generation | Agentic coding, Refactoring, Codebase exploration | Code completion, Chat, Code search |
| WORKS WITH | #open-source#editor#customizable | #editor#ide#copilot | #editor#ide#agent | #autocomplete#free#enterprise |
Continue, frequently asked questions
What is Continue?
Is Continue free?
Does Continue include an AI agent?
What are the key features of Continue?
What can Continue be used for?
What are the best alternatives to Continue?
Is Continue better than Cursor?
What are the pros and cons of Continue?
Related tools
AI-first code editor built on VS Code.
Agentic IDE from Codeium with the Cascade agent.
Free AI code completion across 70+ editors.
Privacy-first AI code assistant for enterprise.