GitHub Copilot costs $10-19/month. Claude Pro costs $20/month. You can get 80-90% of the same experience for free by running an AI coding model locally. Here are the best options in 2026.

Update (April 24, 2026): DeepSeek V4 Flash is nearly free at $0.28/1M output tokens. See V4 Flash cheapest frontier model.

The best free setups

1. Continue + Ollama + Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B (best quality)

The gold standard for free coding assistance. Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B scores 88.4% on HumanEval — matching GPT-4o.

Requirements: 24GB VRAM (RTX 4090) or 32GB Mac Setup time: 10 minutes

# Install Ollama
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

# Download the model
ollama run qwen2.5-coder:32b

Then install the Continue extension in VS Code, set provider to Ollama, model to qwen2.5-coder:32b. Done.

You now have:

• Inline code completion (tab to accept)
• Chat sidebar for code questions
• Code explanation and refactoring
• Test generation
• All running locally, zero data sent anywhere

2. Continue + Ollama + Codestral (best autocomplete)

Codestral scores 95.3% on FIM — the best autocomplete model available, including paid ones.

Requirements: 16GB VRAM or 16GB Mac Setup time: 10 minutes

ollama run codestral

Codestral is specifically optimized for fill-in-the-middle, which is the task that powers inline suggestions. If autocomplete quality is your top priority, this beats Copilot.

Note: Codestral’s license restricts commercial use. For personal and open-source projects, it’s fine.

3. Continue + Ollama + Qwen3.5-9B (budget option)

If you don’t have a powerful GPU, Qwen3.5-9B runs on 8GB and still provides useful coding assistance.

Requirements: 8GB VRAM or 16GB Mac/laptop Setup time: 5 minutes

ollama run qwen3.5:9b

Not as good as the 32B Coder model, but it handles code completion, explanation, and simple generation well enough for daily use.

4. Continue + Ollama + DeepSeek Coder V2 Lite (coding specialist)

DeepSeek Coder is trained specifically on code and supports 338 programming languages.

Requirements: 12GB VRAM Setup time: 5 minutes

ollama run deepseek-coder-v2:16b

Good choice if you work with niche languages that other models struggle with.

How it compares to Copilot

Feature	GitHub Copilot	Self-hosted (Qwen Coder 32B)
Price	$10-19/month	Free
Autocomplete quality	Very good	Very good (88.4% HumanEval)
Chat quality	GPT-4o level	GPT-4o level
Privacy	Code sent to Microsoft	Code stays on your machine
Offline	No	Yes
Speed	Fast (cloud)	Fast (local GPU)
Multi-file context	Good	Limited by VRAM
Setup	Install extension	Install Ollama + extension

The main advantage of Copilot is multi-file context awareness and seamless integration. The main advantage of self-hosted is privacy and zero cost.

The optimal free setup

Use two models:

1. Codestral for autocomplete — best FIM model available
2. Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B for chat, code review, and generation

In Continue’s config, set Codestral as the autocomplete model and Qwen Coder as the chat model. This gives you the best of both worlds.

{
  "tabAutocompleteModel": {
    "title": "Codestral",
    "provider": "ollama",
    "model": "codestral"
  },
  "models": [
    {
      "title": "Qwen Coder",
      "provider": "ollama",
      "model": "qwen2.5-coder:32b"
    }
  ]
}

Related

• How to Replace GitHub Copilot for Free
• Best Open-Source Coding Model in 2026
• What Is Codestral? Mistral’s Coding Model Explained
• Best Self-Hosted AI Models in 2026

FAQ

What’s the best free AI coding assistant in 2026?

Continue.dev with Ollama running Qwen 3.5 27B locally is the best fully free setup — it gives you autocomplete, chat, and inline editing with no subscription. For cloud-based free options, DeepSeek’s free tier and Qwen’s API free tier are excellent.

Is there a free alternative to GitHub Copilot?

Yes. Continue.dev + Ollama + Codestral 22B gives you Copilot-level autocomplete for free. It runs locally, requires no subscription, and your code stays private. The setup takes about 5 minutes.

Are free AI coding assistants good enough for professional work?

For most daily tasks (autocomplete, boilerplate, simple refactors), free tools are 85-90% as good as paid alternatives. The gap shows on complex multi-file tasks and architectural decisions where frontier models like Claude Opus still have an edge.

Related: 9 Open Source Alternatives To Paid Tools