Amp vs GitHub Copilot

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Cheaper paid plan: GitHub Copilot — $10/mo vs $20/mo for Amp
Free plan: Both have one
Public API: Amp has one; not confirmed by us for GitHub Copilot
Best fit: Amp: Developers who already pay for ChatGPT or Claude and want another agent harness at no extra cost · GitHub Copilot: Teams standardising on one assistant across mixed IDEs and languages
Platforms: Amp: Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS · GitHub Copilot: VS Code extension, Web, macOS, Windows, Linux

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

AmpCoding agent that runs in your terminal, a Mac app or Amp's cloud machines, on your own model subscriptions or keys

GitHub CopilotInline completions, chat and coding agents across the major IDEs

Side by side

Fact	Amp	GitHub Copilot
Category	AI Coding Assistants	AI Coding Assistants
Pricing model	Freemium	Freemium
Starts at	$20/mo	$10/mo
Public API	Yes	Not confirmed
Trust score	96 / 100	94 / 100
Platforms	Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, API	VS Code extension, Web, macOS, Windows, Linux
Company	Amp Frontier Corporation	GitHub, Inc.
Launched	2025	2021
Last verified	Oct 15, 2026	Oct 16, 2026

What our research says

Amp

Amp is now its own company and has turned from a pay-per-token agent into a free agent harness plus paid cloud machines: bring a ChatGPT or Claude subscription or your own keys and the agent itself costs nothing, while $20 or $200 a month buys included usage and orb time. It suits developers who want agents running in parallel on remote machines and can live with a fast-moving beta; teams that want a stable editor plugin and fixed terms should look elsewhere.

Pros

Hobby tier is free with your own subscriptions, keys and runners, with no Amp token fees
Pay-as-you-go model usage at provider API prices with no markup for individuals and non-enterprise workspaces
Teams tier adds thread sharing, multiplayer and SAML/OIDC SSO at no extra charge
Runs from a CLI on macOS, Linux and Windows via WSL, plus Mac and iOS apps and cloud orbs

Cons

Mac and iOS apps are betas that require macOS or iOS 26
Pricing changed three times in 2026, so plans read today may not hold
Orbs are billed by the minute and by size, so larger machines burn the allowance faster
Prepaid credits expire twelve months after purchase

GitHub Copilot

Still the least disruptive way to put an assistant in front of a whole engineering org, but the credit meter means the $10 tier is no longer a flat-rate promise once anyone starts using agents seriously.

Pros

Broadest IDE coverage of any assistant: VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Neovim, Xcode
Free tier is real and needs no card, which makes org-wide trials trivial
Unlimited completions on every paid tier, so the meter only touches the expensive work

Cons

Four individual tiers from $10 to $100 make it hard to predict what a team actually costs
Credits are consumed by premium models at very different rates, so budgeting is guesswork
IP indemnity is Business-and-up only, which is often the deciding factor for enterprises

Which one fits

Choose Amp if you need

Developers who already pay for ChatGPT or Claude and want another agent harness at no extra cost
Running several agents in parallel on cloud machines that keep working with the laptop closed
Small teams that want shared threads, SSO and pooled credits without per-seat fees

Choose GitHub Copilot if you need

Teams standardising on one assistant across mixed IDEs and languages
Organisations that need IP indemnity and admin policy control
Developers who mostly want completions and occasional chat