Continue vs Pieces
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Continue if you want open-source ai code assistant and agent for vs code and jetbrains (Supervised agent, freemium); choose Pieces if you want on-device ai long-term memory and copilot for developers (Copilot, freemium).
| Continue | Pieces | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Open-source AI code assistant and agent for VS Code and JetBrains | On-device AI long-term memory and copilot for developers |
| Type | agent | product-with-agents |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Copilot |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (open source); Hub from $10/mo (reported) | freemium · Free for individuals; Teams plan contact for pricing |
| Best for | developers, mid-market, enterprise | developers, smb, mid-market |
| Deployment | self-hosted, saas | self-hosted, saas |
| Modalities | text, code | text, code |
| Models | model-agnostic | model-agnostic, gpt, claude, gemini, llama, open-source |
| Protocols | mcp, function-calling, rest-api | mcp |
| Integrations | VS Code, JetBrains, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Ollama | VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Chrome, Cursor, Claude Desktop, GitHub Copilot |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 5 documented |
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
Pieces
- +Local, on-device processing positioned as air-gapped and privacy-first (encrypted, with PII and API-key filtering per the vendor)
- +Cross-tool memory that spans IDEs, browsers, terminals, and chat apps, not just one editor
- +Works offline with local models and is model-agnostic (local Llama, plus GPT, Claude, Gemini)
- -Memory only captures while the app is running and is capped at a rolling ~9-month window
- -Copilot assists and recalls; it does not take autonomous actions on your behalf
Which should you choose?
Continue is open-source ai code assistant and agent for vs code and jetbrains, best for developers, mid-market, enterprise. Pieces is on-device ai long-term memory and copilot for developers, best for developers, smb, mid-market. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.