10 Best AI Coding Agents for Developers in 2026

When I began testing AI coding agents for our engineers, I anticipated some time before I had to realign. I grossly underestimated the dramatic change in our workflows. By 2026, these tools don’t autocomplete lines anymore.

They collaborate with me to plan, refactor, and debug entire codebases. Selecting the right tool has a real impact on our budget and productivity. In this guide, I will take you through the coding agents I’ve tested, and illustrate how to choose the best one for the needs of our team.

Why the AI coding agent landscape shifted in 2026

By 2026, the AI coding agent landscape transformed as software development adapted to fully autonomous systems managing entire codebases. In previous generations, tools focused on code completion. However, the evolution of large context models in conjunction with improved IDE integration led to tools that understood entire code repositories and managed inter-file dependencies.

These tools could debug, test, and refactor. Distributed systems became the standard, and tools that could manage entire engineering processes rather than simply augment code generation were now in demand.

In response, AI coding tools became fully autonomous agents that planned and executed changes within the context of multiple files, closures, and environments. This not only rendered the tools capable of the software engineering processes, but also transformed the tools from passive agents to active engineering collaborators.

Quick Comparison Table

Agent	Best For	Interface	Autonomy Level	Starting Price
Claude Code	Deep reasoning on complex refactors	Terminal, IDE, desktop, web	High	Free tier; Pro/Max plans
OpenAI Codex	End-to-end agentic coding workflow	CLI, cloud, IDE, ChatGPT	High	Free tier; paid plans
Cursor	AI-native IDE experience	VS Code fork (desktop)	Medium–High	Free (limited); $20/mo Pro
GitHub Copilot	Issue-to-PR automation in GitHub	GitHub, IDEs	Medium	Free tier; $10/mo Pro
Cline	Transparent, controllable agent loop	VS Code extension	Medium	Free (bring your own key)
OpenCode	Provider-agnostic, offline-friendly	CLI	Medium–High	Free (BYOK)
Gemini CLI / Antigravity	Free access to frontier models	Terminal, IDE	Medium	Free
Devin (Cognition)	Delegating full tasks autonomously	Cloud, desktop	Very High	Free tier; $20/mo Pro
Aider	Lightweight, git-native pair coding	CLI	Medium	Free (BYOK)
Windsurf	AI-native IDE with agent flows	Desktop IDE	Medium–High	Free tier; paid plans

1. Claude Code

Claude Code is Anthropic’s terminal-native coding agent. It’s also found in VS Code, JetBrains, a desktop app, and on the web. Claude Code ranks among the Best AI Coding Agents for Developers in 2026, not due to any flashy IDE features, but because of its impressive deep reasoning and planning on complex and large, multi-file refactors. Claude Code reads project context through a CLAUDE.md file. This file helps Claude Code make decisions on project architecture, testing, and coding conventions before it begins coding.

Due to its impressive capabilities, many developers use it as a last resort tool on difficult coding problems. This is mostly because the foundational models of Claude Code also power some other agents on this list, but it doesn’t come without drawbacks. The most notable of these is, even at the highest-tier subscription plans, rate limits bite especially on heavy, automated workflows. Developers using Claude Code for automated workflows should use the coding agent within the limits.

Where it’s strong: Excels at complex, multi-file reasoning; analyzes project context through CLAUDE.md, enabling architecture-conscious decisions; offers strong first-pass coding, especially useful for reducing retries; can work in any environment (terminal, IDE, desktop, web).

Where it’s weaker: Lacks GUI; rate limits can impact heavy, automated workflows, even on best paid plans; suboptimal for rapid in-editor, tab-like completions.

Best for: Developers aiming for high levels of reasoning and architectural quality, especially those considering it an escalation tool for higher-order problems.

Claude Code Pricing

Claude Code is only available via subscription or by API as there is not a standalone pricing option.

• Pro: $17/month (paid yearly) or $20/month (paid monthly) — available for individual developers
• Max 5x: $100/month
• Max 20x: $200/month
• Team (Premium seats only): $100/seat/month prepaid, $125/seat prepaid, minimum 5 seats (Standard seats ~ $20/seat do not cover Claude Code)
• Enterprise: Pricing is flexible and adds a 500K context window along with compliance perks
• API (pay-as-you-go): Sonnet 5 with an early access price of $2/$10 for the first million input/output tokens with a September 1, 2026 price of $3/$15. Pricing is higher for Opus-tier models
• Free plan: Does not have Claude Code

Claude Code Key Features

• CLI with terminal-first design; available in VS Code, JetBrains, as a desktop and web app
• Reads project context via CLAUDE.md file, allowing for customization to fit project conventions and architecture
• 200K tokens on subscription; 500K for Enterprise; 1M via Opus (API-based)
• “Dynamic Workflows”
• Task subdivision via parallel subagents, most of which can work on separate parts of a larger task
• Task subdivision via effort control (standard, extra, max)
• Mid-task cache is preserved by the Messages API to diminish context repetition cost
• Live “/cost” command; shows cost per model, cache hit ratio, and rate limit usage

2. OpenAI Codex

OpenAI Codex is a coding agent system consisting of a CLI, cloud work, IDE extensions, and ChatGPT workflows. OpenAI Codex has swiftly grown its reputation of being one of the Best AI Coding Agents for Developers because this coding agent system interacts consistently across a terminal, browser, and cloud workspace. With the recent improvements in their structures, this system has shown a noticeable improvement to both its agentic execution and code quality.

Adoption has been rapid in part thanks to the millions of users it has weekly, in addition to the substantial amount of first-hand users at OpenAI. For developers who want a tool that will help complete a task in multiple places, Codex is a good option. One thing to be mindful of is the tradeoff between usage limits and sticker pricing. For some users, limits on usage may be unbearable. Because of this, frequent users should pay closer attention to their consumption.

Where it’s strong: Uniformity of behavior across CLI, cloud, IDE extensions, and ChatGPT; strong and rapidly improving agency; high adoption rate, including heavy and widespread internal usage at OpenAI.

Where it’s weaker: Rolling usage limits; less apparent costs but tighter limits; recommended model pairing is inconsistent as there is no dedicated “codex” model.

Best for: Developers aiming for high levels of reasoning and architectural quality who want one agent across multiple surfaces (CLI, cloud, and app) without losing context.

OpenAI Codex Pricing

Codex is included with ChatGPT plan bundles and is not available separately.

• Free: $0/month — limited trial access
• Go: $8/month — light usage
• Plus: $20/month— full Codex web, CLI, and IDE access
• Pro: $100/month (5x Plus usage) or $200/month (20x Plus usage)
• Business: Pay-as-you-go seats, or standard seats around $20/user/month annually
• Enterprise / Edu: Custom pricing with shared credit pools
• API (pay-as-you-go): around $1.75 for every million input tokens and $14 for every million output tokens for current Codex model

. OpenAI Codex Key Features

• Spans CLI, cloud delegation, IDE extensions, a web app, iOS app, ChatGPT connected workflows
• Delegate-and-return model; task is sent, Codex works in an isolated sandbox, and returns with a diff, terminal logs, and test citations
• Works on multiple tasks simultaneously even in different projects
• Native GitHub integration
• Works directly from GitHub Issues and Pull Requests; includes code review
• Slack integration for task creation and monitoring
• Available on Amazon Bedrock starting June 2026
• Fast mode; lower latency with higher credit cost

3. Cursor

Cursor is an AI editing tool that is based on a version of VS Code. It is one of the fastest tools for tab completion and writing code with the help of cloud agents that work in the background. It has been named among the Best AI Coding Agents due to its highly developed UI and plugin systems. It has a large community, which also gives support related to its use.

The tools’ support of custom plugins, rules, and hooks make it very flexible for teams. The downside of Cursor is that it relies on a credit system, and if teams tend to use a lot of coding agents, it may go beyond the limit of what is affordable. For developers who use Cursor a lot, this system should be more strictly monitored.

Where it’s strong: Great AI-first editor; rapid, context-aware tab completion; cloud agents that seamlessly integrate; extensive configuration (rules, hooks, subagents, MCP); largest community and plugin ecosystem in the field.

Where it’s weaker: Credit-based, usage-driven billing has led to unpredictable costs for heavy users; value is tied to adopting Cursor as your primary editor, creating switching costs.

Best for: Individual developers and teams looking for the most advanced AI-native IDE that require standardizing their workflows.

Cursor Cline Pricing

• Free: $0/month — limited usage
• Pro: $20/month — standard individual plan
• Business/Teams: $40/user/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing
• Usage beyond included limits is billed on a credit/usage basis, which has been the most common source of unexpectedly high bills — set spend limits if you use it heavily.

Cursor

• VS Code customized beyond plugins to include integrated AI
• Rapid and context-aware tab completion that predicts edits and actions
• Composer — custom model designed for low-latency, high-throughput agentic editing, deployed in-house
• Cloud/Background Agents that continue working on a task when you are coding in a different location
• Sub-agents — independent agents working in parallel with separate contexts and tool access
• Extensibility primitives: Rules, MCP, Hooks, Skills, Plugins; .cursor, .claude/agents, and .codex/agents configs/structures
• Cursor Blame (Enterprise) — builds upon git blame, adding entries for human edits, tab completions, and agent runs
• AI code review and bug detection integrated in the editor, available in the sidepanel
• Privacy mode when enabled, code is not stored by model providers (SOC 2 compliant)

4. GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot has one of theKey Features largest raw user bases among AI coding tools and it has a good free tier, which makes it highly accessible. Due to its integration in GitHub, it is the best tool for developers who wish to have a workflow that is built on GitHub, since agent mode supports direct integration to issues and pull requests.

Recent updates expanded the range of frontier models in paid tiers, adding competition to specialized agents. However, it shines best in well-structured codebases where the task complexity is low-to-medium, rather than extensive, open-ended restructuring. Teams with an already established GitHub integration are most likely to gain the most benefit and will need to change their workflow the least.

Where it’s strong: Easier to adopt due to broad popularity; generous free tier; agent mode easily integrates with GitHub; recently added the ability to go from issue to PR to agent mode with sandboxed execution and a default data exfiltration firewall.

Where it’s weaker: GitHub Copilot is tuned to assist with low to medium complexity code. Sessions are scoped to a single repo/branch and are also time restricted. GitHub Copilot has also received lower scores in benchmarks for coding agents.

Best for: AI-enhanced coding work that closely resembles standard repository actions will benefit teams that work completely in GitHub.

GitHub Copilot Cline Pricing

• Free: $0/month — limited completions and chat
• Pro: $10/month (or ~$100/year)
• Pro+: $39/month — higher limits and premium model access
• Business: ~$19/user/month
• Enterprise: ~$39/user/month
• Code completions are unlimited and free, even on the Free tier. Paid tiers primarily unlock agent mode, premium models, and higher usage caps.

GitHub Copilot Key Features

• Most comprehensive agent of all tools listed for native integration with GitHub repos, issues, and pull requests
• Agent mode processes multi-file edits, up to eight agents run in parallel via git worktrees
• Cloud coding agent operates from an ephemeral GitHub Actions sandbox, creating an automated pull request
• Default firewall prevents data exfiltration during agent runs
• Copilot Chat for in-editor Q&A, explanations, and debugging
• A variety of frontier models (Claude, GPT, and others) beyond OpenAI, across all paid tiers
• Free tier users get unlimited code completions with no cost
• Most effective on well-defined, scoped, and tested tasks versus large, disruptive refactors

5. Cline

Cline is a step-loop agent extension for VS Code that is open-source and allows developers to see what an agent is going to do and approve the action beforehand. Because of this visibility, it often ends up on lists of agents for developers who want more from their AI agents while still retaining control of what actions are being performed on their code.

Since Cline is model-agnostic, developers using this extension get to choose the model based on their task and financial capabilities. Because of this feature, Cline is appealing to teams offering tighter model provision restrictions. The major downside with this agent is that because of its model-agnostic feature, the agent’s output is totally controlled by the user’s choice of the model.

Where it’s strong: Provides full transparency as every action is visible and requires approval; because it is model agnostic, offers flexibility to choose a model based on budget and policy; very suitable for teams with stringent data or supplier constraints.

Where it’s weaker: Offers less “batteries included” than commercial platforms; requires more manual setup and less configuration as compared to turnkey tools.

Best for: Provides real agent autonomy to developers while allowing the visibility and control to surpass the loss of code agent autonomy.

Cline Pricing

• Open Source (core extension): Free — bring your own API key (Anthropic, OpenAI, Bedrock, etc.); you pay your model provider directly
• Optional hosted credits: Pay-as-you-go inference billed through Cline for teams that prefer one bill instead of managing separate provider keys
• Teams: Approximately $20/user/month (after an initial free period)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing with SSO and SLA
• The spending of teams on models that are used on a daily basis generally falls in the range of $5–$30/day based on which model is selected.

Cline Key Features

• Open-source VS Code (and JetBrains) plugin with full transparency and step-by-step agent loop
• Each file edit, command, and browser action requires user consent to run
• We allow total model freedom. Clients can use their keys on Anthropic, OpenAI, Bedrock, Vertex, Azure, OpenRouter, or other local models.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) allows you to add custom tools easily.
• We have Plan/Act modes where you can “think through the approach” and “execute the approach” separately.
• We offer optional hosted, pay-as-you-go inference credits for teams that prefer one consolidated bill.

6. OpenCode

Rapid community adoption and strong star growth made OpenCode, an agent that operates totally in the command line, one of the Best AI Coding Agents for Developers. Because it uses local models to compute tasks, it does not send code to a cloud provider which makes it a great choice for developers who are working on projects with high security or compliance related concerns.

It provides flexibility across multiple model providers, meaning teams are not restricted to a particular vendor’s pricing or plans. GitHub’s official partnership has made authenticating existing Copilot users to OpenCode easier. The trade-off is that there is a more manual setup compared to other commercial tools. This benefits more technical teams compared to beginners.

Where it’s strong: Fully open-source and provider agnostic; can be run entirely offline with local models; community growth and GitHub star velocity; official authentication partnership with GitHub Copilot.

Where it’s weaker: Requires more manual setup than packaged commercial tools; documentation and ecosystem relative to agents are quite immature; and is best suited for users who are technically confident.

Best for: Target users for Gemini CLI / Antigravity include teams that face push back when proprietary cloud AI tools are used due to security or compliance concerns. It also targets users who want portable solutions and model provider options.

OpenCode Pricing

• Free and open-source (MIT license) — no paid tier, no subscriptions, no caps on tool usage
• BYOK required: you bring your own API keys (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek, Ollama, etc.)
• The cost is based on your own model — usually talked about in the range of $2–$64/month based on which models and usage (cheap with budget models like Gemini Flash, higher with Claude Opus/Sonnet)

OpenCode Key Features

• Open-source, terminal-based coding agent.
• Supports 75+ LLMs and local models for being fully offline.
• Can run without sending code to any Cloud Provider.
• Go-based TUI (terminal UI).
• LSP integration.
• Official authentication partnership with GitHub Copilot which allows paid Copilot subscribers to use OpenCode.
• Rapid and Active community development.

7. Gemini CLI / Antigravity

Gemini CLI and Google Antigravity are both agents of Google’s coding ideation with Antigravity as a free terminal tool that provides a direct line to the model, while Gemini is a more complete agentic IDE with an Agent Manager. They find their way to the Best AI Coding Agents for Developers list because of their foothold on the frontier models with Gemini CLI offering free access with a personal Google account, with no subscription strings attached.

Antigravity improves upon this by offering Gemini and some third-party models like Claude, giving developers more flexibility in one interface design. For developers working under agentic methods on a budget, the combination is very persuasive. Meanwhile, the drawback is that the tools are much less mature in terms of depth and their ecosystems when compared to their more established competitors with terminals and IDEs.

Where it’s strong: Frontier Gemini model access is free through personal Google accounts, and Antigravity provides a more complete agentic IDE experience with an Agent Manager, in addition to supporting some third-party (including Claude) and Gemini models.

Where it’s weaker: Compared to more established terminal and IDE agents, Antigravity is still developing and less capable for large scale, complex, and autonomous multi-file refactors.

Best for: Gemini CLI / Antigravity best serves users who want to pioneer agentic coding with Gemini Models and keep subscription costs to a minimum.

Gemini CLI / Antigravity Pricing

Gemini CLI is being consolidated into Antigravity CLI (Gemini CLI legacy free/Pro/Ultra tiers discontinued on June 18, 2026).

• Free: $0/month—historically 1,000 requests/day on Flash-class models with a personal Google account.
• Google AI Pro: $19.99/month—reasoning model with 1M context window.
• Google AI Ultra: $100/month—around 5x Pro.
• Google AI Ultra Max: $200/month—around 20x Pro (this level replaced the prior single $249.99/month Ultra level).
• Gemini Code Assist Standard/Enterprise licensing continues as before for Enterprises/organizations concerning the non-consumer tier offerings.

Gemini CLI / Antigravity Key Features

• Gemini CLI: free, open-source terminal agent, now Antigravity CLI.
• Antigravity: an agentic IDE with an “Agent Manager” for overseeing multiple agents.
• Multi-model — primarily uses Gemini, but includes Claude and additional third-party models.
• 1M-token context window on flagship Gemini model.
• Agent Skills, Hooks, Subagents, and Extensions/plugins.
• Background workflows for asynchronous processes.
• Google Workspace and Google Cloud tools integration.
• Async project-plan tooling (Conductor) for Markdown-based plans and automated reviews

8. Devin (Cognition)

Devin is designed to accept agentic coding for a whole scoped task such as a refactor, a migration, or a bug fix, and manage the entire process to include creating and submitting the PR. It has made the Best AI Coding Agents for Developers list as it accepts whole backlog items rather than assisting with coding one line at a time.

Cognition has invested in their product even further by adding a desktop IDE. Since their early benchmark testing, their reliability has improved significantly. Windsurf successfully integrates with Slack, Linear, and Jira for reporting and tasking. Windsurf performs better with specific tasks, as results on open-ended tasks are still inconsistent.

Where it’s strong: Designed to complete well defined tasks from planning to execution, testing, and making a pull request with little oversight. Integrates with Slack, Linear, and Jira. More reliable than earlier versions.

Where it’s weaker: Often combines poorly defined or open-ended tasks. Still needs a lot of help in task scoping to improve reliability, and costs more with less predictable Agent Compute Units.

Best for: Engineering teams that want to offload a task from an operational backlog to development and don’t want to do a lot of task scoping to guarantee reliability.

 Devin Pricing

• Free: $0/month—limited trial.
• Core/Pro: $20/month.
• Max: $200/month.
• Teams: Starting from a minimum $80/month plus a per-seat charge.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing.
• Spending is based on tier and metered in Agent Compute Units (ACUs), so actual spend can be considerably more with more tasks.

 Devin (Cognition) Key Features

• Fully autonomous, end-to-end task execution: plans, writes code, runs tests, and opens a pull request with minimal supervision
• Devin Desktop: an IDE layer (built on the former Windsurf codebase) after Cognition’s acquisition
• Integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Linear, and Jira for task acquisition and progress reporting
• Devin Cloud: longer running autonomous sessions executed on Cognition’s own infrastructure
• Designed for scoped backlog items: migrations, refactors, and known bug fixes
• Human review is built into the workflow via pull request generation instead of direct commits

9. Aider

Aider is a git-native CLI tool that modularizes development. Aider’s utilization of a developer-supplied model lends itself to high customizability and developer modularity. It’s named one of the Best AI Coding Agents for Developers due to it’s ability to seamlessly integrate into git and terminal workflows and it’s lack of a full IDE or platform.

Aider’s simplicity lends itself to ease of integration into devs already established version control. Because it’s bring-your-own-model, output quality and cost are entirely up to the choice of model. Aider is certainly less suited for devs who desire a polished interface, but is perfect for terminal dwellers.

Where it’s strong: Combines a natural fit for version control with a git-native workflow, light-weight, and easily scripted. Build your model, build your cost, build your capabilities.

Where it’s weaker: No GUI. Quality of output and cost are completely dependent on the model with less features or built in guardrails than more comprehensive platforms.

Best for developers wanting a seamless CLI which slots straight into their terminal and git workflow.

 Aider Pricing

• 100% free and open-source (Apache-2.0 license)—no subscriptions.
• BYOK required: ties to Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, or any LiteLLM-compatible provider; you pay them directly.
• Full IDE subscriptions are around $0.03 to $1/task, since Aider’s terminal/diff-based workflow is token-efficient.

Aider Key Features

• Light, open-source tool for the terminal; focuses on git-native pair programming
• Auto-commits on meaningful edits, so each AI alteration is its own git history entry
• Repo-map feature, indexes an entire codebase for ease of context at any size
• Fully model-agnostic via LiteLLM, works with Claude, GPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, or local models
• Publishes its own public, “polyglot,” multi-programming language benchmark
• Minimal footprint; no IDE, no GUI, just a CLI that fits into an existing terminal workflow

10. Windsurf

Windsurf is a competitor to other AI-native IDEs due to their focus on agent editing. Windsurf focuses on providing the lacking editing experience when using AI in coding to bolster agent editing. Windsurf is certainly a purpose-built Aiding IDE and is a competitor to Cursor.

Cognition’s agent ecosystem (with Devin and others) could integrate autonomous cloud-based task delegation with editor-level work. As a newcomer in an oversaturated IDE field, it has a long way to go to catch up to the longer-established competition’s community and plugin resources. Thus, it is worth considering for developers looking for alternatives to Cursor.

The following were summarized on industry reports, July 2026. This industry is subject to rapid changes. Pricing, benchmark ratings and features should be confirmed directly with each vendor prior to making a decision.

Where it’s strong: AI focused IDE that has its own agent lead editing; has backing from Cognition’s agent ecosystem which leads to smoother editing and deployment; great potential for the future.

Where it’s weaker: Still new and doesn’t have the same level of community backing and plug-in ecosystem as its competitors; still working on getting feature parity to its competitors.

Best for: Developers who would like an easy to use AI editor and who want to try out the alternatives to Cursor from the Cognition agent ecosystem.

Windsurf Pricing

Windsurf moved from a credit pool that lasted a month to daily/weekly limits in March 2026; pricing stayed the same after the June 2026 Devin Desktop rebrand.

• Free: $0/month — no limits on Tab autocomplete, daily/weekly agent (Cascade) quota limits
• Pro: $20/month — daily/weekly quota limits, premium models included
• Max: $200/month — highest quota limits
• Teams: $80/month base + $40/user/month for each full seat
• Enterprise: Custom pricing with direct discussion with Cognition
• After quota is spent, overage is billed at raw API costs instead of marked-up credit costs.

Windsurf (Devin Desktop, by Cognition) Key Features

• AI-native IDE from Windsurf with Cascade, its agent that plans, edits, executes commands, and self-corrects on failure
• In-house models for coding (SWE-1, SWE-1.5, SWE-1-mini) that also do not consume usage credits if selected
• Multiple agents can be run in parallel using Git worktrees, allowing multiple work-in-progress branches without conflicts
• In every plan including Free, unlimited Tab autocomplete and inline “Command” edits
• Availability of external frontier models (Claude, GPT, Gemini) in addition to Windsurf’s models
• Expanding integration with Cognition’s Devin agent to take over longer, more autonomous tasks from within the editor
• Daily/weekly usage limits (instead of a monthly credit pool) intended to create a more consistent and optimal pace of use

How to Actually Choose Between These Seven

From having tested all of these systems on our projects, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that their selection comes down to our team’s working styles, the extent of cost control we desire, and the degree of complexity of our codebase.

If we value reasoning on our side the most — this includes deep refactors, architectural decisions, and multi-file changes — I would say Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. We consider these to be our escalation systems for the tough challenges, and we don’t treat them as something we use on a daily basis.

If we value the user-friendliness of the editor and speed most, we prefer Cursor and Windsurf. Our team relies on these when we wish to have fast, inline suggestions and we don’t want to assign a task completely. Just be careful about the cost. We had to enforce new limits after our first month.

If we are already embedded deep in GitHub, Copilot requires the least changes to our current systems. It doesn’t help with our most complex refactors, but for automating the flow from issue to PR for tasks that are well defined, it’s hard to find a better option.

If we value control and transparency over convenience, Cline provides us a view into every step it takes and allows us to set the model it uses at our cost and compliance risk.

If security and compliance are a concern for us, OpenCode and Aider allow us to keep everything local or fully bring your own key (BYOK), so nothing leaves our infrastructure unless we select a cloud model.

If we want to rapidly move entire backlog items, Devin is definitely built for that. Migrations, known bugs, scoped tasks, etc. — as long as we’re willing to scope the work beforehand.

If cost is a priority and we want a frontier model for free, you might want to check out the Gemini CLI / Antigravity. It is less developed for larger autonomous refactors, though.

What I’ll say is, we didn’t arrive at having only one tool. There are some features in the tools we developed and customized that are complementary, and our team uses a primary daily driver, and an escalation tool for the harder problems. This is a better solution than finding one to do everything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Take

My honest conclusion after using all these agents on multiple projects is that none of the agents will win on their own. Based on what the goal is will determine the right agent. For our current daily work, we will use a fast, editor-native tool, but for complex work, we use a deeper reasoning agent.

Teams that have a budget can use agents like OpenCode and Aider which have free or BYOK options. Teams that require more autonomy can check out Devin. We highly advise testing these agents on your own code base before purchasing. We have discovered that benchmarks are not truly showing how these tools are going to work with your team.