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Is the new GitHub Copilot free tier good enough?
Snippets from my experience
GitHub recently introduced a free tier for Copilot, offering 2000 code completions and 50 chat messages per month. While it sounds generous at first glance, how do its competitors fare?
I use a lot of copilot enterprise at my day job as a senior software engineer. On the other hand, I have been using Cody from Sourcegraph for all my personal projects and general exploration.
Here’s how the two compare in my experience. Do note that all these are my personal experiences based on the most recent versions of these extensions on VS Code, at the time of writing this article.
Where Copilot Falls Short
- Clunkier Autocompletes
Copilot’s autocompletes no longer feel as instant or intuitive. Many times, I found myself thinking, “It’s faster to write this code myself than wait for the right suggestion.” The once-seamless flow of supercharged autocomplete feels diminished. - Shift Toward Chat Usage
My workflow has evolved to rely more on Copilot Chat for generating code chunks, rewriting, and refactoring. While useful, this deviates from Copilot’s original promise of delivering a “zen mode” for developers by making autocompletion faster and smoother.