Codestral
Ranked 13 of 15 coding models by recommenders
People recommend Codestral for coding autocomplete and generating git commit messages, and it has a free tier. Its conversation ability is weak, and some found it lackluster.
People recommend Codestral for coding autocomplete and generating git commit messages, and it has a free tier. Its conversation ability is weak, and some found it lackluster.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Strong coding autocomplete
“Codestral is rediculously bad at conversation, but it's -for me- the best model around for "magic autocomplete"”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “The User Is Visibly Frustrated” “it's -for me- the best model around for "magic autocomplete"”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “The User Is Visibly Frustrated” “Codestral is pretty good for coding autocomplete”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Mistral OCR 4”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak at conversation
“Codestral is rediculously bad at conversation, but it's -for me- the best model around for "magic autocomplete"”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “The User Is Visibly Frustrated”
Other coding models people recommend
The four most recommended other coding models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor Composer | 214 | 79 | 73% | 12 | 1 mo11 owners | Approved |
| Qwen3-Coder | 165 | 49 | 77% | 12 | 2 mo7 owners | Approved |
| GPT-5.3-Codex | 135 | 78 | 63% | 11 | 2 mo4 owners | — |
| Meta Muse Glimmer 30B | 70 | 18 | 80% | 3 | — | — |
| CodestralThis page | 8 | 2 | 80% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“my go to model for generating git commit messages by leveraging their free codestral model”
“it was lackluster at best”
“Codestral is pretty good for coding autocomplete”
“Codestral is rediculously bad at conversation, but it's -for me- the best model around for "magic autocomplete"”
“it's -for me- the best model around for "magic autocomplete"”
“Given what Vibe already did in the previous versions with codestral-v2, that's great news.”
“models i have found that work great”
“a locally available model like Qwen or Codestral is night and day”
“It's not perfect, but neither is any other model or product, so good enough for me.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.