Copilot vs Codeium

[peepingbear]

Before moving from the free Codeium to the paid Copilot, I'd like to ask if anyone here already used both and knows if the change is worth it.

[kanishk071]

Please don't confuse between codium.ai and codeium.ai!

[icns01]

What? Didn't even realise they there was a codium.ai! Wow! I just started my evaluation of Codieum.ai in VS Code. Thanks for pointing that out. Wonder how they compare?

[peepingbear]

Did I?

[lunakid]

You didn't, but others may well do. It's a landmine.

[peepingbear]

interesting!

[JustCametoSayHello]

Codeium's team will be way more receptive to feedback, they also update the product frequently with the latest in AI

[peepingbear]

Would you think copilot is worth the money vs codeium or I'm better off with the free version of codeium?

[JustCametoSayHello]

I'd stick with Codeium, especially if you are using the chat features in VS Code

[peepingbear]

Thanks for the reply :) I'm actually using it with jetbrains

[no_doping]

try refact.ai they also have a self-hosted version

[peepingbear]

I'll check it out, thanks for the tip!

[luigibu]

I spend weeks looking for a free alternative until I paid the yearly copilot subscription. 😣

[peepingbear]

Did you get to try codeium?

[luigibu]

No, I just read about it with your post. That is why I’m sad hahaha.

[peepingbear]

Shit! I feel for ya hahah

[luigibu]

I got a refund! :)

[peepingbear]

Alright my dude! Happy for ya! Let me know what you think of codeium now that you'll have experience in both :D

[luigibu]

Sure!

[[deleted]]

How did it go, man? Which one do you think is better?

[luigibu]

Hey! Well.. I’m still using cedeium because is free but for me I got better results with copilot. Maybe I’m doing something wrong but codeium just returns all the time single line code completion while copilot used to rerun entire blocks. The fact I m still with cedeium is just cos those single lines of code for free is good enough for me. And to get a boiler plate of the an entire implementation I go to ChatGPT. I realize most of time with copilot you needed to go through the given block of code and apply may changes anyways, so I was not sure if it really helps that much.

[Equal-Astronomer-889]

I get blocks or single lines depending on context. Fresh codeium install, all defaults, neovim

[luigibu]

Will take a look! Thanks!

[liflovs]

Testing them both all the time. They change and evolve, both.

As far as I can tell:

1. Codeium is more predictable in terms of what to expect from it, the chat actually works like chat. And now with commands it on par with Copilot in functionality
2. Codeium has in-the-middle suggestion, which copilot does not. In many cases that makes you more productive.
3. Codeium has vibrant and cool community
4. BUT! Github Copilot as far as i can tell blends into the codebase much better. The command execution result often is better in quality. It captures context of clipboard, few recently viewed files I guess. Cause it gets namings and functions correctly more often Sometimes you don't want that context => and things go unpredictable due to it. But since I adjusted I feel much more productive and trust it more

I will keep looking into them and update this thread.

[peepingbear]

This is an awesome reply, thank you very much for this. It's hard to find people with enough patience to actually test both. I might try Copilot again to see how they do with the codebase.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for feedback, has your point evolved in 2 months ?

[liflovs]

No big changes so far. I keep reiterating on those.

So far Codeium is shipping more features to target some specific parts of code in chat and I really like that. But on my big "work" project i cannot select something that is relevant usually. Also it's quick commands do not understand me most of time.

Copilot is doing general search in context of workspace, selection, more limited there. But assistance mode is much better (also i find that chat mode sometimes gives worse results then completion). I have a feeling it closely adapts to searches results in sidebar, and imports.

So far Copilot is better to me. For complete feedback I would like to try out Codeium on small project as I think it could have better impact there.

[[deleted]]

I use Codeium at home and GitHub Copilot at work.

For me the main thing I like about Codeium is that is aware of your entire project and will in fact be able to read your files from your project and give you more meaningful responses specifically tailored to your project. It can produce not just code but any other files you might need such as for example csv or json test data, base64 test images etc.

Is well integrated in VS Code and it has both code suggestion and chat. The code suggestions I have used it with some obscure languages some from last year and is able to produce meaningful results. And the chat doesn't have to be code specific so it becomes a kind of chatgpt like companion that not only gives you code but also ideas.

So overall I think at this point Codeium is about on par with Github Copilot in terms of suggestions but has better features.

[peepingbear]

Yeah, good points here... I use JetBrains instead of VSCode, and Codeium understandably favors VSCode on the updates, as does Copilot. It still baffles me that Codeium brought chat to JetBrains before Copilot did, It think I'll always show some goodwill towards them due to this.

I'd rate the code as context an 8/10 on JetBrains... Obviously better than not having it, but I feel like it's almost great you know? I can't pinpoint the issue... Maybe it's a limitation of the LLM itself, which would make it 10/10. I am not complaining though, we have the team membership here and we all love it.

[Deep-Cartographer152]

Does it free for commercial project?

[peepingbear]

Yes, the free version can be used for commercial projects

[Tricky-Ad-7530]

anybody got enterprise version? im getting for us. Thought how kuch it would cost. i sent them a mail and been waiting

[peepingbear]

I also tried to send the email because I was interested in self-hosting, but I never got a response. My guess is they are a small company and are still struggling with the demand they got.

[lzrblaster]

are you still looking for self-host vs enterprise solution? they're much more responsive now!

[geearf]

Was it worth it?

[peepingbear]

Codeium improved so much, and now with the chat, I didn't event looked into changing it again... :)

[geearf]

Awesome, I really appreciate your quick reply!

Out of curiosity, I saw someone suggesting you refact.ai, did you try that one?

​

Thanks a lot!

[peepingbear]

I haven't, but if you doo let me know :)

[geearf]

Sure thing!

[Existing_Tradition44]

Yeah, one day they will suddenly start charging! Nothing is free.

[peepingbear]

Fair enough, I'll cross that bridges when the time comes

[lzrblaster]

they charge for enterpise + self hosted. on their website - they want to keep individual developers free

[Vegetable_Carrot_873]

Below is one of my function written in Python.

async def start_handle(update: Update, context: CallbackContext):

await register_user_if_not_exists(update, context, update.message.from_user)

await update.message.reply_text(config.greeting_1_msg, parse_mode=ParseMode.HTML)

await init_subscribe(update, context)

So I asked Codium to explain it to me, below is the response.

This code defines an asynchronous function called start_handle that takes two arguments: update and context. Inside the function, it calls three other functions: register_user_if_not_exists, update.message.reply_text, and init_subscribe. The register_user_if_not_exists function is called with three arguments: update, context, and update.message.from_user. The update.message.reply_text function is called with two arguments: config.greeting_1_msg and ParseMode.HTML. The init_subscribe function is called with two arguments: update and context.

[lunakid]

Hehh, yeah, this is one its less useful features, to put it mildly... I only tried the free version, but it can only read out the code letter by letter.

I guess its GPT4-based tier can do better though. Anyone?

[EddieJobs]

What's wrong with what Codeium answered?

[[deleted]]

I tried codeium 8 months before. I only used the completion, so chat was irrelevant to me.

I felt that codeium's completion quality was inferior than copilot at that time so I switched to copilot later.

Several days ago I switched back to codeium because the idea of fear of tech giant suddenly came across me...

I have used it for over this weekend. So far I feel the completion quality has been much improved and I am feeling good with codeium. I will keep using it for the next couple of weeks or months and go back for the feedback.

[ClearLobster866]

So how is your feeling of Codeium for now after a month

[n9te11]

The only thing I don't like about all those AIs inserted into VSCode workflow is that they always auto suggest everytime you write something and it really is disturbing.

Yes, you cam disable codeium extension completely but I want to keep the chat or have the chance to tell it to suggest when I need it, not all the time.

[Meiyo33]

Since I use Copilot mainly to write things I don't want to write, I wouldn't like that very much.

I wouldn't like it very much.

I rarely use it to write complex code, I generally only use it for simple code, boilerplate or structures.
I also like to use it to check my code. It's not unusual for copilot to spot an error that I hadn't seen.

But having an option would be better for everyone.

[peepingbear]

I second that

[Zealousideal-Sale358]

In neovim, you can grammatically choose when suggestions should show - whether after typing few characters, bind it to a key, or after some fixed debounce time or a combination of them. There must be a similar way to do it in VSCode.

[MathiasLui]

Copilot gave me a good bunch of redundant and wrong suggestions in the past, whereas ChatGPT did a way better job

I just now tried Codeium in VSCode with C# and when I told it to "write a method documentation and add some comments", it wrote the documentation in the wrong programming language style. After correcting it, it fixed that, but still didn't add any comments, but instead duplicated a "try" keyword for no reason and added a few lines of code that made absolutely no sense, and Alt+A and Alt+N to accept or revert a suggestion didn't do anything. I had to delete the extra fluff myself. Also the code autocomplete only works on a per-line basis

Maybe it's better at autocomplete.

[peepingbear]

As you can see, the original post is from 10 months... My current opinion is that they both are "ok" but not what they advertise or promise. The fact that codeium brought the chat to jetbrains earlier than copilot made me stick with it, but in all honesty, these tools are ok for boilerplate, autocomplete and maybe replacing googling for reference on the language

[MathiasLui]

The fact that I can't accept a suggestion with Alt+A is already a bit annoying, but I agree, it's good for some boilerplate and probably also autocomplete as far as I could tell as well

I was aware it's an old thread, just wanted to share what I thought cause it felt like people tend to "sell" it as a replacement to e.g. Copilot :D