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CodeGeeX 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

Free plan
Both — CodeGeeX is free to use, GitHub Copilot has a free plan
Best fit
CodeGeeX: Developers who want an unmetered free assistant across VS Code and JetBrains · GitHub Copilot: Teams standardising on one assistant across mixed IDEs and languages
Platforms
CodeGeeX: VS Code extension · GitHub Copilot: VS Code extension, Web, macOS, Windows, Linux
Trust score
About even — CodeGeeX 90, GitHub Copilot 94
Status
Both up at our last check (Oct 16, 2026)

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

CodeGeeXFree coding assistant plugin from Zhipu AI for VS Code and JetBrains, with completion, chat and unit-test generationGitHub CopilotInline completions, chat and coding agents across the major IDEs

Side by side

FactCodeGeeXGitHub Copilot
CategoryAI Coding AssistantsAI Coding Assistants
Pricing modelFreeFreemium
Starts at—$10/mo
Trust score90 / 10094 / 100
PlatformsVS Code extensionVS Code extension, Web, macOS, Windows, Linux
CompanyZhipu AI (Z.ai)GitHub, Inc.
Launched20222021
Last verifiedOct 16, 2026Oct 16, 2026

What our research says

CodeGeeX

A genuinely free assistant with a wide IDE spread and bilingual English/Chinese prompting, which few Western rivals offer. The catch is provenance and reliability: it is a China-hosted service, the international-facing site is hard to reach, and completion quality trails the current top commercial assistants.

Pros

  • Free for all developers with no seat licensing
  • Covers completion, chat, tests, translation and repo Q&A in one plugin
  • Research lineage is open: Apache-2.0 code and published weights
  • Over 1.3 million installs on the VS Code marketplace alone

Cons

  • Official site is unreliable to reach from outside China
  • Documentation and community skew Chinese-first
  • No documented public API for the assistant service itself

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 CodeGeeX if you need

  • Developers who want an unmetered free assistant across VS Code and JetBrains
  • Bilingual Chinese/English teams prompting in either language
  • Researchers who value published model weights and code

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

CodeGeeX vs GitHub Copilot: the questions people ask

Is CodeGeeX cheaper than GitHub Copilot?

CodeGeeX is free to use; GitHub Copilot starts at $10/mo.

Does CodeGeeX or GitHub Copilot have a free tier?

Both: CodeGeeX is free to use, and GitHub Copilot has a free tier.

More comparisons

All CodeGeeX alternatives →All GitHub Copilot alternatives →Browse all AI Coding Assistants →