Continue Review: Free GitHub Copilot Alternative, Any LLM

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GitHub Copilot costs $10/month. Cursor costs $20/month. Continue costs nothing — and it lets you plug in whatever AI model you already have access to. For a beginner who wants real AI autocomplete inside their editor without a subscription, that's a serious proposition.

Continue is an open-source extension for VS Code and JetBrains. You bring your own API key (Claude, Gemini, GPT-4, or others), and Continue handles the chat panel, inline completions, and code edits. No platform lock-in. No monthly bill from the tool itself — only from the model provider you choose.

This review is for beginners deciding between Continue and paid alternatives like GitHub Copilot. Here's what you actually get.

What Continue Does

Continue adds two main capabilities to your editor:

• Chat panel — ask questions about your code, paste errors, request explanations, or ask it to generate new functions. Think of it as having a conversation with an AI that has full access to your open files.
• Autocomplete — inline suggestions as you type, similar to Copilot's ghost-text completions.

There's also an inline edit mode — select a block of code, hit a keyboard shortcut, and type an instruction. Continue rewrites the selection in place. This covers most of what beginners actually need from an AI coding assistant.

Continue has over 33,000 GitHub stars and more than 2.5 million installs on the VS Code Marketplace, making it one of the most widely used open-source AI coding extensions available.

Setup: Bring Your Own API Key

This is the part that trips people up. Continue is free to install, but it needs a model backend to function. You connect it to an LLM provider using an API key.

The most common options for beginners:

• Anthropic (Claude) — Claude Sonnet is a strong default. You'll need an Anthropic API account and credits.
• Google Gemini — Google offers a free API tier, which makes it the cheapest way to get started.
• OpenAI — GPT-4o works well but costs more per token than the alternatives.
• Ollama (local models) — run a model on your own machine, completely free, no API key needed. Performance depends on your hardware.

Installation is straightforward:

1. Install the Continue extension from the VS Code Marketplace or JetBrains Plugin Marketplace
2. Open the Continue sidebar and click "Add Model"
3. Pick your provider, paste your API key, and select a model

The config is saved as a JSON file at ~/.continue/config.json. You can edit it directly if you want to switch models or add custom system prompts.

How It Compares to GitHub Copilot

Most beginners weighing Continue are comparing it against Copilot. Here's the honest breakdown:

| Feature | Continue (free) | GitHub Copilot | |---|---|---| | Cost | Free (pay model API costs only) | Free (2,000 completions, 50 chats/mo) or $10/mo Pro | | Autocomplete | Yes | Yes | | Chat | Yes | Yes | | Model choice | Any (BYOK) | Fixed (GPT-4o / Claude 3.5 / Gemini) | | Inline edits | Yes | Yes | | Setup effort | Medium (API key required) | Low (GitHub login) | | IDE support | VS Code, JetBrains | VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, others | | Agent mode | No | Limited |

Copilot wins on polish and ease of setup. You install it, log in with your GitHub account, and it works. No API keys, no JSON configs.

Continue wins on flexibility and cost. If you already have Claude API access — or if you want to use Gemini's free tier — you can get equivalent autocomplete and chat for close to nothing per month.

The BYOK Trade-Off

Bringing your own API key is both Continue's biggest strength and its main friction point. The cost advantage is real: a moderate amount of coding with Claude Sonnet via the Anthropic API (Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3 per million input tokens) will run well under $5/month for most beginners — a fraction of a $10/month Copilot subscription. Gemini's free tier can push that to zero for light users.

But "free" has an asterisk. API pricing is pay-per-token. If you paste in a huge codebase for context, or have a long chat session, costs add up faster than you'd expect. Copilot's flat monthly fee is actually simpler to budget for.

The other wrinkle: autocomplete quality is tied to the model you pick and how fast the API responds. Copilot's completions feel snappier than Continue's in most cases — partly because Microsoft has invested heavily in completion latency, partly because local inference through Continue adds overhead.

Who Should Use Continue

Use Continue if:

• You already have API access to Claude, Gemini, or GPT-4 for other tools
• You want to experiment with different models without changing editors
• You're on a tight budget and willing to do minor setup
• You want to run local models via Ollama with no API costs

Stick with Copilot if:

• You want something that just works out of the box
• You're on GitHub's free Copilot tier (2,000 completions/month, no credit card) and not paying anyway
• You find API key setup frustrating

Consider Cline if: you want an open-source VS Code extension that goes further than Continue — Cline acts as a full coding agent that can read files, write code, and run terminal commands. See our Cline review for a full breakdown.

The Honest Verdict

Continue is a genuinely good tool. The chat panel is useful, the inline edits work, and the model flexibility is something paid tools can't match. For a beginner who already has API access and doesn't mind a one-time setup, it's a better deal than paying $10/month for Copilot.

The catch is that it's not quite as polished. Autocomplete feels a step behind Copilot in speed and accuracy, and the BYOK setup is a real barrier for people who just want to hit install and code.

If you want to go deeper on free options, our best free AI coding tools roundup covers Continue alongside everything else worth considering in 2026. And if you want to understand how Continue fits alongside more powerful tools like Claude Code, that's a different category — Claude Code is a terminal-based agent built for multi-step tasks, not editor autocomplete.

To get started with Continue using Claude as your model backend, you'll need an Anthropic API account — sign up at console.anthropic.com.