GitHub Copilot Alternative for Visual Studio (2026)

Looking for a GitHub Copilot alternative for Visual Studio? Our pick in October 2026 is Google Antigravity: a full coding agent from Google with an official Visual Studio 2026 extension that works on Antigravity's free plan. If your team already pays JetBrains, Junie inside ReSharper is the natural second choice. If you mainly want different models, you may not need to leave Microsoft's agent at all: Visual Studio 18.10 lets the built in Agent (Preview) run on your own Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft Foundry or Ollama key, with or without a GitHub sign in.

This guide covers Visual Studio, the Windows IDE for C#, C++ and .NET, not VS Code. VS Code extensions do not run in Visual Studio, so Cline, the official Claude Code panel and the Codex extension are not installable there. We checked each option on October 27, 2026 against vendor docs and queried the Visual Studio Marketplace directly. VS Code users should start with our best AI coding assistant roundup.

Why Visual Studio has fewer Copilot alternatives

GitHub Copilot ships inside Visual Studio, and few rival vendors have built for the IDE. The official docs make the gaps clear. Anthropic's IDE integration page covers VS Code and its forks (Cursor, Devin Desktop, Kiro) and tells users of other editors to run the claude CLI in the editor's terminal. OpenAI's Codex IDE page lists VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Xcode and JetBrains IDEs, with no Visual Studio build. AWS, which did ship a Visual Studio plugin, is retiring it.

Billing is the other push. GitHub's plans page meters chat and agent work in GitHub AI Credits. Copilot Free includes 2,000 completions a month and an allowance of credits, Pro is $10 a month (1,500 total credits), Pro+ $39, Max $100, and Business and Enterprise $19 and $39 per seat. Completions are not billed in credits on paid plans, so heavy agent users feel it most.

GitHub Copilot alternatives for Visual Studio at a glance

Google Antigravity: the best overall alternative

Antigravity is Google's agentic coding product, and its Visual Studio extension docs target Visual Studio 2026 on Windows 10 or 11. The prerequisites are a Google account on any Antigravity plan, the free one included, or a Gemini Enterprise entitlement. Install it from Extensions, then Manage Extensions, search for Google Antigravity, close Visual Studio so the VSIX installer can finish, then reopen it and click the Antigravity button in the right margin.

Google announced the IDE extensions on August 20, 2026 as a light window onto the same agent as its desktop app and CLI, with a side panel, inline diffs you review before they land, and interactive plans.

The Marketplace listing (Google.GoogleAntigravity) was at version 1.0.261016.0, updated October 18, 2026, with about 25,000 installs. Google AI Pro includes Antigravity quota, as our guide on whether Gemini CLI is free for Pro users explains.

Pick it if you want a full agent in Visual Studio 2026 without paying GitHub. Skip it if you are still on Visual Studio 2022, which the docs do not list.

Keep Microsoft's agent, bring your own model

The cheapest alternative to a Copilot plan may be Visual Studio itself. Microsoft's model docs say that starting with Visual Studio 2026 version 18.10, Bring Your Own Key is in preview and on by default in Community, Professional and Enterprise, and that it works whether or not you are signed in to GitHub. Supported providers are Microsoft Foundry, OpenAI, Anthropic and Ollama, with custom endpoints for OpenAI and Ollama.

Open Chat, choose Add a model or Manage Models in the model picker, connect your provider and work in Agent (Preview). The Visual Studio blog notes a breaking change: the older Ask and Agent modes no longer take your own models, and Ollama models added earlier must be added again. Not every model supports every agent capability yet.

This changes who you pay, not the product: Microsoft's agent runs on a model you pay for directly, or on a local model through Ollama at no API cost. The docs describe it for the chat agent, not inline completions.

Pick it if you already have an Anthropic or OpenAI key, or want a fully local setup. Skip it if you need a feature the preview flags as unsupported for your model.

Junie in ReSharper: best for JetBrains shops

ReSharper, JetBrains' long running Visual Studio add in (about 2.3 million Marketplace installs), gained an agent in ReSharper 2026.2: Junie, JetBrains' coding agent, as a preview. Select Junie from the agent list in the AI Assistant tool window to switch from chat into Agent mode, where it can edit code, refactor, run terminal commands and handle Git. Junie is model agnostic, and you choose its model under Extensions, ReSharper, Options, AI Assistant, Junie.

Junie draws on your JetBrains AI quota, included with dotUltimate, the All Products Pack or a separate JetBrains AI subscription, with a free trial. Tick the AI Assistant plugin when you install ReSharper. JetBrains calls this the first step toward Agent Client Protocol support, so more agents should plug into the same window later.

Pick it if your team already licenses dotUltimate. Skip it if ReSharper's footprint in your IDE is something you have avoided before.

Claude Code and Codex in Visual Studio

There is no official Visual Studio extension for Claude Code or Codex. You have two workable routes.

The plain route is Visual Studio's integrated terminal; Anthropic's docs say the CLI works in any terminal. The richer route is a community extension that drives the CLI you installed:

• Claude Code Extension for Visual Studio (publisher Daniel Carvalho Liedke) had about 340,000 installs and an update on October 27, 2026. It runs Claude Code, Codex, Cursor Agent, OpenCode, Antigravity and other CLIs in a panel with a diff view, on Windows 11.
• cv4vs Agents (Corsinvest, GPL 3.0, version 1.14.0) is built for Claude Code and exposes 80 IDE tools through an in process MCP server, so the agent can build, read the Error List, step the debugger and run tests. It supports 2022 and 2026.

Neither comes from Anthropic or OpenAI, so review what they can run. Usage bills to your Claude or ChatGPT plan. For how these agents differ, see Claude Code vs Codex vs Gemini CLI; for Claude Code against Copilot, see GitHub Copilot vs Claude Code.

Tabnine, CodeRush and Amazon Q

Tabnine still lists Visual Studio 2022 (17.8 to 17.14) and Visual Studio 2026 (18.1 to 18.7) in its supported IDE table, all Windows only. Tabnine is now part of Tricentis (tabnine.com redirected there when we checked, with no public price), and its Visual Studio listing was last updated May 12, 2026. It suits teams that want completions and chat with private deployment.

CodeRush from DevExpress is free and includes AiGen, an assistant for targeted edits, tests from live debug values and compiler error fixes. AiGen needs your own API key from OpenAI or Azure.

Amazon Q Developer works in Visual Studio through the AWS Toolkit, but AWS announced its end of support: the IDE plugins stop being supported on April 30, 2027, and new Free Tier accounts and new subscriptions have been blocked since May 15, 2026. AWS points users to Kiro, and Kiro's migration guide says it has no native Visual Studio plugin, so the options are the Kiro IDE or the Kiro CLI in a terminal. Nobody new should start here.

How we checked

Vendor pages can lag, so we asked the Visual Studio Marketplace itself. This query searches only Visual Studio IDE extensions (not VS Code) and prints version, last update and installs. We ran it for every product above.

import json, urllib.request
URL = "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery/extensionquery"
def search(text):
    body = {"filters": [{"criteria": [
        {"filterType": 8, "value": "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Ide"},
        {"filterType": 10, "value": text}], "pageSize": 5}],
        "flags": 0x1 | 0x2 | 0x100 | 0x200}
    req = urllib.request.Request(URL, data=json.dumps(body).encode(), headers={
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
        "Accept": "application/json;api-version=7.2-preview.1"})
    for ext in json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(req))["results"][0]["extensions"]:
        stats = {s["statisticName"]: s["value"] for s in ext.get("statistics", [])}
        print(ext["displayName"], ext["versions"][0]["version"],
              ext["lastUpdated"][:10], int(stats.get("install", 0)))
search("Google Antigravity")

A search for Codeium returned no Visual Studio extension, so the old Windsurf plugin is gone, and every "Codex for Visual Studio" listing came from a community publisher. We did not run Visual Studio itself (our test box runs Linux), so setup steps come from vendor docs.

Which GitHub Copilot alternative should you pick?

• You want a real agent and pay nothing to start: Google Antigravity on Visual Studio 2026.
• You like Microsoft's agent but not the Copilot bill: Bring Your Own Key in 18.10 with an Anthropic or OpenAI key, or Ollama for local models.
• Your team already licenses JetBrains tools: Junie in ReSharper 2026.2.
• You already pay for Claude or ChatGPT: run Claude Code or Codex in the terminal, or through a community extension if you want a panel.
• You need private deployment and mostly want completions: talk to Tabnine.

To give any of these agents your own tools, our guide on how to use MCP servers in GitHub Copilot explains the mcp.json file Visual Studio opens from the Copilot Chat tools panel.

FAQ

Is there a free GitHub Copilot alternative for Visual Studio?

Yes. Antigravity's Visual Studio extension works on the free Antigravity plan, CodeRush is free (with your own OpenAI or Azure key for AiGen), and Visual Studio 18.10 can run its built in agent on a local Ollama model without a GitHub account. Copilot Free itself also remains, with 2,000 completions a month.

Can I use Claude Code in Visual Studio?

Not with an official extension. Anthropic supports VS Code, its forks and JetBrains, and says to run the claude CLI in a terminal elsewhere. In Visual Studio you can do exactly that, or use a community extension such as cv4vs Agents or Claude Code Extension for Visual Studio, which drive the CLI you install.

Does Cursor work with Visual Studio?

No. Cursor is its own editor built on VS Code, so switching to it means leaving Visual Studio. You can run the Cursor Agent CLI from inside Visual Studio through the community Claude Code Extension, which lists it as a supported agent.

What happened to Amazon Q in Visual Studio?

AWS is ending support for the Q Developer IDE plugins on April 30, 2027, and stopped new signups on May 15, 2026. Its replacement, Kiro, has no Visual Studio plugin, so Q users who want to stay in Visual Studio should look at Antigravity, Junie or a terminal agent.