GitHub Copilot vs Tabnine
GitHub Copilot and Tabnine side by side: what each one is, what it costs to start, and whether you can try it free. Everything below comes from the vendors' own sites and other public sources, not from hands-on testing.
At a glance
| GitHub Copilot | Tabnine | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Code & Dev Tools | Code & Dev Tools |
| Starting price | Free; paid plans from $10/mo (checked October 2026) | $39/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Not listed |
| Profile | Read profile | Read profile |
Prices are in US dollars unless shown otherwise. Confirm the current price on the vendor's site before you buy.
Key differences
GitHub Copilot lists a free tier and Tabnine does not.
GitHub Copilot has the lower starting price ($10/mo against $39/mo for Tabnine). The cheapest plan rarely has the same limits or features, so compare plans before choosing on price.
Both are in our Code & Dev Tools category.
About each tool
GitHub Copilot
GitHub's AI coding assistant: completions, chat, code review and agents in VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Xcode and on GitHub. Free plan; Pro is $10 a month.
Who it is for
Individual developers, students, and teams or enterprises that want AI help inside their editors and GitHub workflows. GitHub sells separate individual, Business and Enterprise plans, with admin budgets and pooled credits for organizations.
Strengths
- A free plan is available, with 2,000 code completions a month and limited chat and agent use
- GitHub's feature matrix lists VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, Neovim and Eclipse, plus GitHub.com, GitHub Mobile and the command line
- On paid plans, code completions and next edit suggestions do not use AI credits
- Copilot Student is free for verified students, and GitHub says verified teachers and popular open-source maintainers may be eligible for free Copilot Pro
- Business and Enterprise plans pool credits across the organization, with admin budgets at enterprise, cost-center and user level
Limitations
- Usage is metered in AI credits (1 credit equals $0.01) based on token use. Included credits reset monthly and do not carry over
- On individual plans, Copilot pauses once the included credits run out unless you turn on paid additional usage and set a budget
- Annual Pro and Pro+ subscribers stay on the older premium-request system until the plan expires (300 and 1,500 requests a month, $0.04 per extra request), then move to Free
Tabnine
AI coding assistant for VS Code, JetBrains, Eclipse and Visual Studio, deployable as SaaS, VPC or on-premises. Reported: from $39 a user a month billed annually.
Who it is for
Tabnine's pages describe it for professional developers and engineering teams, especially organizations that want self-hosted or air-gapped deployment, zero code retention and IP indemnification. Its published prices are per user and billed annually, so it is not aimed at casual one-person monthly use.
Strengths
- Tabnine says it keeps zero data retention for code and usage metrics, and that its proprietary models are never trained on customer code.
- Tabnine lists SaaS, VPC, on-premises and fully air-gapped deployment, plus a choice of LLM providers or private model endpoints.
- Tabnine's pages list agents for code review, testing, documentation and code fix, and Enterprise adds codebase-aware chat, fine-tuned models, SSO, and admin and usage analytics.
- Reported: both paid plans include zero code retention and all deployment options, and the Agentic Platform ($59) adds autonomous agents, a CLI, an unlimited-connection context engine and MCP tool support over Code Assistant ($39).
- Tabnine lists IP indemnification for Enterprise and says generated code is checked against publicly viewable repositories.
Limitations
- Tabnine's own pages disagree on free access: the AI code assistant page offers Tabnine free in a supported IDE without terms, and the Cline comparison page lists a 14-day Dev trial, while price trackers report the official pricing page has no free tier and the older free and Dev plans were removed.
- Reported: the seat price excludes GPU infrastructure for on-premises or air-gapped deployments, and LLM usage plus a handling fee may apply when Tabnine provides model access.
- Tabnine was reported acquired by Tricentis in July 2026. The press release does not say whether the standalone coding assistant, its pricing or its plans will continue unchanged.
