GitHub Copilot

What hackers pick instead

• oh-my-piA batteries-included fork of the Pi coding harness with sensible defaults, easy provider switching and built-in search and context tools, though critics find it bloated and token-hungry.104recommend
• Grok Build CLIFast, smooth terminal coding agent that people find capable and recommend; critics say it uploads whole directories, including secrets, to xAI.66recommend
• DeepSeek HarnessRecommended as an open-source agent harness with good observability, a plugin system and a desktop app. Critics mostly question its plugin design and worry about data collection.63recommend
• Claude Code VS Code extensionBrings Claude Code into VS Code for reviewing and editing code in a GUI. Main caveat: a lookalike extension on the Cursor marketplace reportedly contained malware.31recommend
• Antigravity CLIRecommended as a fast, responsive step up from Gemini CLI, with many praising its speed. Critics point to low usage quotas and login problems.31recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 2089 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Staying in the market and providing multi-model and harness options (Claude and Codex usable in Copilot) is good for the market, even if you don't use it.

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Changes to GitHub Copilot Individual Plans”

2. I have been so far happy with the value that Copilot brought but for the past few weeks I have felt the chokehold on the number of requests.

   Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter”

3. Also, per-seat price includes usage and the cost of extra usage is identical to going direct with model providers. I'd say it makes sense.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Kimi K2.7 Code is generally available in GitHub Copilot”

4. GitHub gives you like $20 for free per month and I think they have a deal with the larger vendors because their pricing is insanely cheap.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Gemini 3”

5. Github's pay per prompt pricing model is phenomenal for users to the point of blowing Anthropic's subscription offering out of the water

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Claude Code is locking people out for hours”

6. It is kind of alright, I use mostly on VS when coding C# or C++, for code completions, error analysis, check code quality and such.

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS”

7. The workflow that GitHub has for prompting agent inside the ide itself is by far and away the nicest and most intuitive I've used.

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'? I mapped every one”

8. You’re not locked into vscode. There are plugins for other IDEs, and a ‘copilot’ cli tool very similar to Claude Code’s cli tool.

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “ChatGPT Pro now starts at $100/month”

9. It tends to go off the rails pretty quickly if things start going badly wrong, but it can complete simple tasks with supervision.

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Chinese hackers use Anthropic's Claude”

10. I actually like Copilot autocompletion for side projects, because I can build something and still save a massive amount of time

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “It's still ok to enjoy programming”

11. The cheapest still very useful alternative I've found is GitHub's Copilot at €10/m base price, with multiple models included.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has ignited a passion again”

12. Just selecting text and directly asking the chat. Or seeing the generated code in the ide to accept it reject it. It's neat.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Switch to Claude Without Starting Over”

13. If their pricing turns out to be what they claim, and copilot cli has accurate token counts, they had the best deal around.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “GitHub Copilot code review will start consuming GitHub Actions minutes”

14. Subagents can work for literally days, generation tens of thousands of lines of code with one prompt that costs 12 cents.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition”

15. I have found AI that autocompletes (like the GitHub Copilot VS code extension) to be more effective in these scenarios

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Vibe Writing”

16. With copilot at least you can choose cheaper models if things get too expensive and restrict them in the worst case.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Ask HN: How do GitHub Copilot and Anthropic Claude compare in cost?”

17. This is why I like GitHub Copilot's autocompletion, I'm right there guiding and policing the code as it appears.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “How the Claude Code team does code review”

18. The vscode chat is great. you can plug in any models there and they get sandboxed, tools and link to your code.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber”

19. Looks like I'm ending my subscription, good (likely too good, no way my account was even remotely within profitable range) access to opus-4.6 was the only reason I used this at all.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “Changes to GitHub Copilot Individual Plans”

20. The Copilot bot we use on GitHub slows down PR reviews by recommending changes that look reasonable yet either don't really work or negatively impact performance.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “We Mourn Our Craft”

21. I assume and I had an idea that maybe copilot could get it working to interface with some more modern software and it just didn't really have what it takes.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “No, everyone is not using AI for everything”

22. It's the typical land grab: start off decent, win people over, build a moat, then start shaking everybody down in the most egregious way possible.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Updates to GitHub Copilot interaction data usage policy”

23. Instead of polluting PRs, Copilot will insert comments and logging and text fields and buttons with links to web sites with helpful product tips

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash”

24. access to all of the latest and greatest models for half the price of a single company's basic plan is (or rather, was) a very compelling option

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “Changes to GitHub Copilot Individual Plans”

25. If Microsoft is willing to put ads into your PRs via Copilot like this, imagine what they could put into your codebase itself with Copilot.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Copilot edited an ad into my PR”

26. Copilot does not benefit from this (their pricing model is also different though, it is request-based rather than token usage based, so it is hard to compare).

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview”

27. A few months ago I often found auto not good enough and switched models manually at extra cost, but these days auto has always been good enough

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Spending on AI is becoming almost impossible for businesses to budget”

28. the agent server picks out what it thinks is your most important rules, and inserts them as part of the context before running each new prompt

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Gemini CLI tips and tricks for agentic coding”

29. Things like line-completion is fine, though - except comments; I wish I could tell VSCode's Copilot to never write a line of human thought.

    Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “Ask HN: How do you maintain flow when vibe coding?”

30. Github Copilot has potential, but seems abandoned already and I find it very odd, because it's the one product with actual substance

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “RemoveWindowsAI”

31. you can get almost identical features by simply installing the GitHub app inside Slack, and then asking Copilot to work on something

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Minions: Stripe's one-shot, end-to-end coding agents – Stripe Dot Dev Blog”

32. It makes my life SO much easier (less time spent on editing config files, less chance to make a silly typo whilst writing scripts).

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla”

33. I see a lot of AI features hate towards VS Code. Want to say that there are other people like me who really love these features

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “I switched from VSCode to Zed”

34. considering that all of the action is happening on the same device, I am worried this is going to increase supply chain risks

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “GitHub Copilot App”

35. it will be faster and more accurate at identifying the root cause of issues than humans who actually worked on the project

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “IBM Triples Entry Level Job Openings. Finds Limits to AI”

36. there are things like Copilot Autopilot or you can make the permissions for Claude so wide that they can work for an hour

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “I used AI. It worked. I hated it”

37. It's letting me build stuff I probably wouldn't be able to build by myself without raising lots of money for way cheaper

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%)”

38. I'd say on average, probably around the +100% mark, mostly as a lot of the work I'm doing currently are simpler tasks

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: By what percentage has AI changed your output as a software engineer?”

39. Copilot is not getting the attention it should considering its user base and its importance in the enterprise context

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Show HN: FrontierHarness Eval – 9 harness, same model, cost per pass varies 17x”

40. Be in the drivers seat for most of the code being written, but find ways to use AI to really enhance the flow state

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first world”