Continue Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

Continue is an open-source AI coding assistant for VS Code and JetBrains that adds autocomplete, chat, edit, and agents while letting you bring any model, including local ones. Best for: developers who want model-agnostic, private AI coding. Price: free extension; hosted plans from $3/M tokens. Rating: 7.8/10.

What is Continue?

Continue is an AI coding assistant that lives inside your editor. Install the extension in VS Code or a JetBrains IDE and you get four things: an Agent that works through tasks for you, Chat for asking questions about your code, Edit for changing code without leaving the file, and Autocomplete for inline suggestions as you type. The big difference from most rivals is that Continue does not lock you into one model. You connect whatever you want, from frontier APIs to a model running locally on your machine through Ollama.

It is built by Continue Dev, Inc. and has been around since 2023. The core extension is open-source under the Apache 2.0 license and has grown into one of the most popular projects in the space, with over 33,000 GitHub stars. More recently the company added a hosted platform, a command-line tool, and source-controlled AI checks that can run in CI, expanding Continue from a pure IDE assistant into a broader developer tooling product.

What Are Continue’s Key Features?

Bring your own model

This is the headline. Continue is model-agnostic, so you can wire up your own API keys for hosted models or point it at a local model via Ollama and keep all your code on your machine. That flexibility is rare and makes Continue a favorite for developers who care about privacy or want to avoid vendor lock-in.

Autocomplete and inline edit

The autocomplete uses fill-in-the-middle completion combined with Language Server data and Tree-sitter parsing to suggest context-aware code as you type. Edit lets you select a block, describe the change, and apply it in place. Both run on whichever model you assign to that role in your config.

Agents and chat

The Agent can work through multi-step coding tasks, while Chat handles the day-to-day questions about your codebase, boilerplate generation, and refactoring explanations. On the hosted platform you can build, share, and govern private agents across a team.

CI checks and CLI

Continue now ships a CLI and source-controlled AI checks you can enforce in CI. You write checks as markdown in your repo and they run as GitHub status checks, suggesting fixes when code does not meet your standards. It is a newer direction and aimed more at teams than solo coders.

How Much Does Continue Cost?

The core extension is free and open-source, so the only cost is whatever your chosen model provider charges, which can be zero if you run a model locally. Continue’s hosted platform starts at $3 per million tokens on a pay-as-you-go Starter plan, with a Team plan at $20 per seat per month that includes $10 in model credits, and custom Company pricing for enterprises. For comparison, GitHub Copilot is a flat $10 per month and Cursor starts at $20 per month, but neither lets you run fully local models for free the way Continue does.

Who Is Continue Best For?

Use Continue if you want control. If you care about privacy, want to run local models, or refuse to be tied to a single AI vendor, nothing else in this category gives you as much freedom for free. It also suits teams that want to standardize on shared agents and enforce AI checks in their pipeline.

Skip Continue if you just want something that works the moment you install it. The model configuration and YAML setup take more effort than plug-and-play tools, and the recent expansion into a platform, CLI, and CI checks makes the product feel less focused than it once was. If you want zero setup, Copilot or Cursor are easier.

What Are the Best Continue Alternatives?

GitHub Copilot

The mainstream default at $10 per month. It is dead simple to set up and deeply integrated, but you are locked into OpenAI-family models and cannot run anything locally. Choose it for convenience over control.

Cursor

An AI-first standalone editor (a VS Code fork) starting at $20 per month. It offers a more polished, opinionated agent experience than Continue, but it is its own app rather than an extension, and it is not open-source.

Cody by Sourcegraph

Strong on understanding large codebases thanks to Sourcegraph’s code search, with a free tier and paid plans. It is a good middle ground if context across a big repo matters more to you than model flexibility.

Final Verdict: Is Continue Worth It?

Continue is the best open-source AI coding assistant available right now, and for the right developer it is a clear yes. The free, model-agnostic extension lets you run AI coding with your own keys or fully local models, which no mainstream paid competitor matches. The community and release pace back that up.

The catch is friction and focus. Setup takes more work than Copilot or Cursor, and the move into a hosted platform, CLI, and CI checks has blurred what Continue is. If you value control and privacy and do not mind tinkering, install it today. If you want the simplest possible AI assistant, look at Copilot or Cursor instead.