Continue vs Roo Code
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 Roo Code if you want open-source ai coding agent for vs code (a cline fork), now archived (Supervised agent, free).
| Continue | Roo Code | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Open-source AI code assistant and agent for VS Code and JetBrains | Open-source AI coding agent for VS Code (a Cline fork), now archived |
| Type | agent | agent |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (open source); Hub from $10/mo (reported) | free · Free (open source); pay your own model providers |
| Best for | developers, mid-market, enterprise | developers |
| Deployment | self-hosted, saas | self-hosted |
| Modalities | text, code | text, code |
| Models | model-agnostic | model-agnostic |
| Protocols | mcp, function-calling, rest-api | mcp, function-calling, rest-api |
| Integrations | VS Code, JetBrains, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Ollama | VS Code, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, AWS Bedrock |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 4 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
Roo Code
- +Open source and model-agnostic with no inference markup (bring your own keys)
- +Multi-mode architecture (Architect/Code/Debug/Ask/Orchestrator) with per-mode tool permissions
- +MCP support and customizable modes gave fine-grained control over the agent
- -Shut down and archived on May 15, 2026; the extension is no longer maintained
- -Was VS Code-extension only, so it depended on your IDE and local environment
Which should you choose?
Continue is open-source ai code assistant and agent for vs code and jetbrains, best for developers, mid-market, enterprise. Roo Code is open-source ai coding agent for vs code (a cline fork), now archived, best for developers. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.