Claude Code vs Continue
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Claude Code if you want anthropic's agentic coding agent that lives in your terminal (Supervised agent, subscription); choose Continue if you want open-source ai code assistant and agent for vs code and jetbrains (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Claude Code | Continue | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Anthropic's agentic coding agent that lives in your terminal | Open-source AI code assistant and agent for VS Code and JetBrains |
| Type | agent | agent |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | subscription · Included in Claude Pro ($20/mo); also pay-as-you-go via API tokens | freemium · Free (open source); Hub from $10/mo (reported) |
| Best for | developers, enterprise, mid-market | developers, mid-market, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas, api | self-hosted, saas |
| Modalities | text, code, api | text, code |
| Models | claude | model-agnostic |
| Protocols | mcp, rest-api, function-calling | mcp, function-calling, rest-api |
| Integrations | GitHub, GitLab, VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, GitHub Actions, MCP servers | VS Code, JetBrains, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Ollama |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 4 documented |
Claude Code
- +True terminal-native agent: reads, edits, runs, and commits across a whole codebase rather than autocompleting lines
- +Flexible autonomy, from per-action approval to auto mode to fully headless runs for CI
- +Deep ecosystem: MCP support, subagents, plugins, GitHub Actions, and IDE extensions, plus a public Agent SDK
- -API-token usage on heavy tasks can get expensive and hard to predict
- -Locked to Anthropic's own Claude models (no model choice)
Continue
- +Open source and model-agnostic, including fully local models for private coding
- +Covers autocomplete, edit, chat, and agent in one configurable plugin
- +Continue Hub adds team rules, governance, and shareable assistant blocks
- -Acquired by Cursor in 2026 with the original repo reported read-only; standalone future is uncertain
- -Heavily configuration-driven, which adds setup overhead versus turnkey tools
Which should you choose?
Claude Code is anthropic's agentic coding agent that lives in your terminal, best for developers, enterprise, mid-market. Continue is open-source ai code assistant and agent for vs code and jetbrains, best for developers, mid-market, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.
This comparison is generated from the sourced Claude Code and Continue profiles. Open either profile to review its evidence and last-reviewed date.