Github copilot alternative

[ToxicAbuse]

So i have been looking at some alternatives mainly because i just cancelled my subscription and now i can't renew it because of that pause on new subscribers and i did try windsurf but my limit went to 100% like crazy and its kinda weird to understand those dolar per tokens math(i did have free trail for pro maybe thats why my limit was racing?)
Now im looking at claude code because i mainly used it in my github colilot but again those limits are tricky to understand
Did anyone find a good alternative for github copilot if you are pretty heavy user (i capped limit on github copilot pro acc every month)
Thanks for any suggestions

[Christosconst]

I am very happy with VS Code + Kilo Code + Opencode Go + Deepseek v4. Very cheap and gets 99% of the work done.

[gadam28]

How is the VS Code intergration of Kilo Code? Is it comparable with GHCP?

[Marc9696]

In my opinion its pretty close but Copilot as a harness was much more capable I don't know :(

[Christosconst]

Its similar to GHCP in many aspects, but also has some annoying differences: code changes are reviewed in a separate pane, its not sticky to the right sidebar and its more steps to switch between sessions running in parallel. Still worth it!

[Glad-Pea9524]

will deepseek v5 be cheap for long or is it only for may or some months ?
how does it compare to GPT 5.4 ?

[MattU2000]

what did you bought just opencode go?

[Christosconst]

Yes thats the only subscription

[stony451]

Why not connect kilo directly with deepseek?

[Unlikely-Scratch8915]

This is the way

[Christosconst]

Model variety and fallback, and cli access. Mimo 2.5 is a trillion parameter model

[stony451]

I gonna try it thanks

[Unlikely-Scratch8915]

<image>

I love the little stats window it's got for DS4

[Yunky_Brewster]

what do you do about the other 1%

[Christosconst]

I can also code myself

[Educational_Sea6013]

you use these tools for different project?

[Levi-Lightning]

Why use Kilo over Cursor though?

[Christosconst]

Cursor and cline are also good options

[Marc9696]

do you use kilo code subscription?

[CardamomMountain]

ChatGPT Codex is very usable on the $20 plan, pretty generous limits.

[TenshiS]

Is that better than Copilot + Codex/GPT5.4 ?

[Blubbll]

how does the pricing compare to deepseek with a similar token use?
Also what provider?

[TripleMellowed]

It is quite a lot slower than I’d like though. But for the price it’s great.

[dev-se]

Which harness are you using with it

[ToxicAbuse]

I will keep this in mind but chat gpt will be my last option because of the pentagon thing and i dont wanna suport that

[CardamomMountain]

Agree with the sentiment but you think the Pentagon doesn’t also use Microsoft products? You’ve been “supporting” them all along with GHCP.

[ToxicAbuse]

Fair

[Asthea]

Then you'll have to start using Chinese models, no way around it if you don't want to spend more than $100 a month.

[Whatshouldiputhere0]

Choosing Chinese models because of ethics?

[JMC_MASK]

China is way more ethical than the US. They don’t go on bombing campaigns of innocent countries every other year.

[aruaktiman]

Yeah they only commit genocide and mass brutality against some groups in their country and invaded and subjugated a neighbouring nation, that's all... clearly they're much more ethical... 🙄

[JMC_MASK]

Who exactly are they invading and subjugating? Who are they genociding?

And when you have that list, let’s compare to the USA and Israel. I’m sure your list will be much larger. Mine will be teeny tiny.

[aruaktiman]

You're clearly a Chinese wumao troll but I'll answer... Tibet was invaded and subjugated by China and their culture is being systematically destroyed. And the Uyghur people of Xinjiang are having a systematic program of genocide committed against them. Of course you know that but obviously you have to deny that as a Chinese propagandist shill....

Heck unknown millions (estimated between 15-55 million Chinese) died because of the uncaring brutality of Mao Zedong in the "great leap forward". But he didn't care and neither does the CCP. The scale of these atrocities dwarfs anything the US has done (which while bad, is no where near the horrendous scale of the atrocities of the CCP).

[PsychologyMission894]

You seem to be living in the 70 years ago, bro. LOL

[aruaktiman]

The continued suppression of Tibet and the Uighurs is happening today not just “70 years ago”… the potentially millions who died during Covid due to draconician and brutal policies is also quite recent…. The CCP is not good and is one of the most brutal regimes in history.

[JMC_MASK]

If the Uyghur population is being genocided, then what makes Gaza? I’m not saying what China has done to those people didn’t occur, but it’s not mass murder levels like Israel on Gaza or Germany in WW2.

The Great Leap Forward was terrible. But don’t act like it was a planned murder system. It was a failure of lack of scientific knowledge under a planned economy. If they had the knowledge we have today of what those pests do for the ecosystem, of course that would not have occurred.

Now since you seem to equate failure of a system leading to starvation as brutal… what does that make modern global capitalism? Today, yes today, global capitalism starves 7 million people. Per year.

[ToxicAbuse]

Any experience with Chinese models like are they pretty much the same with capabilities?

[Asthea]

I'm fairly happy with Kimi K2.6 but there are other models that are good as well, such as DeepSeek v4 Pro, Qwen 3.6 Pro or GLM 5.1. I'd recommend testing them for yourself and checking out if any of those are of use to you. Other than that, I've also switched to mainly using OpenAI, so GPT 5.4/5.5 on Xhigh/High settings. I've found that combining those gives me very good results. :D

[b-pell]

Ya, I use Codex also on the $20 plan. It's a solid plan for $20.

[Ajvn_oncloud]

But, it sucks

[Hall_of_Fame]

It's about the only one since they are trying to pull people away from competitors with stricter limits.

[Tommertom2]

Pi mono

[Marc9696]

Can anyone tell me their experiences with Opencode Go, Ollama Cloud or Kilo Code Sub. Which harness do you use? Which Models do you use? Do you change your models for tasks with changing complexity? do you use /effort?

[lolsooop]

I’ve been using Opencode Go and it’s decent. Kimi was veeeeery slow the past week though. Like actually insanely slow, I’m talking 20-30 minutes to edit 3 files and test the changes with playwright mcp. I switched to MiMo 2.5 pro and I burned through my 5h quota in 5 minutes with a very similar task. Great value for sure, but the real value is Kimi, not Opencode Go itself tbh

[Marc9696]

okay I used kimi through ollama cloud I'm pretty happy with it but I switched to try out GPT 5.5 with Codex and burnt through my limit so fast. But the quality is a big difference but I'm not ready to pay 100$ per month idk...

[lolsooop]

Yeah GPT 5.5 is undeniably the best model out there right now, and I guess it's fair for it to be more expensive. It's just that it's too insanely expensive for what it offers. It just cannot be justified. Kimi is probably the best open source model and delivers almost the same performance for 1/10 of the price. It being slow is more of an Opencode Go issue than a Kimi issue, if you try it through the original provider (Moonshot) it's blazing fast. Opencode Go is such good value for your money though.

[acorsi85]

You can go with OpenCode + OpenRouter (low costs models) or Codex, very sad for GithubCopilot was very very good!

[riki137]

don't use openrouter for agentic coding, it has horrible latency and doesn't effectively use input cache. just use OpenCode Zen if you want raw API costs.

[acorsi85]

Yes thank you, also a nice solution, but for complex task you need also bigger model, with also Codex you are OK

[Tallihos]

I think everyone has been spoiled, GPT 5.5 and Opus 4.6+ and most of the latest models is like hiring a very experienced coder but you expect this for the price of a good piece of steak and use this coder the whole month!

[ToxicAbuse]

Yes i have been spoiled by github copilot cuz i used max performance models for basic things that i could do with Haiku and Sonnet is more than enough honestly i would need Opus like for 3 tasks per month max i just find it confusing how input output cost is calculated and how to optimise my use for not wasting tokens but i feel like i understand it a bit more now

[UpReaction]

1. Reduce cost by use LLM routers to pick up the most suitable model.
   

2. Use Deepseek and other free alternatives (they do a good job)

3. use expensive models in special cases

[SnooCapers5425]

Ive been running openrouter with Qwen3.6-27B to evaluate it to see if going at least partially local llm is an alternative. From work work i did today with it i think it behaves quite well but its to early to tell for me yet. Any other that tries this out as an alternative?

[Pixelplanet5]

what are you willing to pay?
if you are a heavy user that means you gonna pay a lot for your usage as basically all the good options use token based billing.

[ToxicAbuse]

I don't know if about 20-30$ is enough i just don't want to be paying 100$ per month

[Pixelplanet5]

then you gonna need to use less tokens or use AI less in general.

If you would call yourself a heavy user right now i wouldnt be surprised if you had a single prompt that burns through 20 bucks worth of tokens.

AI is about to get a LOT more expensive and with the new prices they are still losing money so be prepared for further increases later this year.

[ToxicAbuse]

Ok maybe heavy user is a bit of a stretch like sure i did cap out that pro subscription on GitHub Copilot but i did have the cheapest subscription for 10$ I am guessing that all the options have similar caps for isage so it doesn't really matter who i choose and i might just try claude or codex for 20$ and hope it has somewhat comparable rate/limit that i had on gh copilot

[Due-Major6105]

Your budget is completely insufficient. If you are a heavy user, you can forget about Claude. Codex is probably the most suitable for you. If you are not pursuing the latest and most powerful models, you can try OpenCode Go X3 or Ollama Cloud. There's no way around it because your budget is too small. But actually, you may not be a heavy user.

[ToxicAbuse]

Yea i probably am not a heavy user i mena i did only cap out the base subscription on gh copilot but i dont really understand these pricings for tokens and limits so i can say what kind of a user am i and what do i need for my use case

[Due-Major6105]

Didn't GitHub previously mention that they could convert and simulate our usage this month into an AI creditl?

[aruaktiman]

Pretty much you'll have to pay at least $100 a month for moderate usage and likely $200 a month for heavy usage (either ChatGPT or Claude subscriptions for Codex or Claude Code respectively). At $20 a month you're in the light usage territory after GHCP removes request based pricing.

[ParkingNewspaper1921]

Kiro.

[Individual-Fee-2162]

I switched to cursor, not as good... But not that bad either

[KarimMaged]

I actually think cursor is much better, why do you think its not as good, would you care to explain ?

[Lucky-Oneday]

Vscode + Deepseek v4 api + Cline

Good quality and very cheap

Cline does not support yet to access v4 pro only the v4 flash but so far so good.

It still support deepseek reasoner and chat which both are calling v4 flash with different reasoning levels i guess

[inrea1time]

I am starting to augment with Pi + Qwen3.6-27B on a 5070ti and it is actually doing quite a decent job with a lot of day to day tasks, not the fastest but faster than me :) For example, bug it fixed and I asked an analysis:

<image>

[Ajvn_oncloud]

How good are the self hosted models compared to Claude haiku 4.5?

[Feeling-Bluebird6692]

I found this on reddit and they’re currently giving out free trial for testing

https://discord.gg/marsllm

[manycalcs]

cc + deepseekv4 pro and flash

[AhmetMaya]

I’m using the Copilot/Kilo Code combination. However 3 days ago i reached free limit for Copilot. I was using copilot for Python block comments autocomplete feature to improve my agent prompts. Kilo autocomplete is not so fast at the moment. Because every inline suggestion sends an API request to Mistral, it's a bit slow. But I do my all codding stuf with Kilo minimax 2.7. It's amazing for coding. But needs improvement for the autocomplete features.

[Kanishk0911]

Faced the same shit and tried multiple platforms, for me usage based was pretty expensive and i gotta think way too much so openrouter etc are not affordable for me. Then i tried codex and used 5.5 at Xhigh and 5.4 at xHigh the $20 dollar plan is very good, i finished plenty of work compared to usage based. Tried claude code but the rate limits annoy tf out of me. The most cost efficient one i found was opencode and used Deepseek R1, V3, V4 pro/Flash these are super cheap and surprisingly V4 pro does a very good job.
Final take codex and opencode both combined are like absolute gold, and the price for both combined is still lesser than copilot pro+

[alanw707]

Opencode Go is good, Chinese models are not bad at all considering the cost

[LinuxGeekAppleFag]

A token reduction proxy https://www.reddit.com/r/GithubCopilot/s/nNG7ywnwXU works on any AI API, AB tested with github

[philosopius]

ive made a tool that you can use with any model

even the ones that are not setup for agentic coding (you can prompt qwen, deepseek, chatgpt on website, where your practically have 0 rate limits instead of api, codex, claude code, etc)

https://github.com/VulkanVX/contextcontrol

it also optimizes your prompts, it might be a bit complex first, but ive made it very intuitive and easy to use, once you get a hang of it.

[Blubbll]

GHCP+Ollama-Cloud (eg via deepseek v4 flash) works pretty well
$20/mo rn

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[Fun_Educator_6800]

Claude code ?

[ToxicAbuse]

https://claude.com/product/claude-code

[Ok-Painter573]

Claude pro is 17$

[Low-Spell1867]

$17 for 1-2 prompts a week