Continue vs Tabby
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 Tabby if you want self-hosted, open-source ai coding assistant for privacy-conscious teams (Copilot, freemium).
| Continue | Tabby | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Open-source AI code assistant and agent for VS Code and JetBrains | Self-hosted, open-source AI coding assistant for privacy-conscious teams |
| Type | agent | product-with-agents |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Copilot |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (open source); Hub from $10/mo (reported) | freemium · Free (open-source Community); Team/Enterprise contact sales |
| Best for | developers, mid-market, enterprise | developers, enterprise |
| Deployment | self-hosted, saas | self-hosted, on-prem, api |
| Modalities | text, code | text, code |
| Models | model-agnostic | model-agnostic, open-source |
| Protocols | mcp, function-calling, rest-api | rest-api |
| Integrations | VS Code, JetBrains, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Ollama | VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, GitHub, GitLab |
| 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
Tabby
- +True self-hosted/on-prem, no cloud or database dependency; runs on consumer GPUs for air-gapped or regulated environments
- +Open source (Apache 2.0 core), model-agnostic, with an OpenAI-compatible API
- +Actively maintained with broad IDE coverage, repo-aware completion, and an Answer Engine
- -Capability ceiling versus cloud incumbents: fundamentally completion, chat, and retrieval
- -Agentic workflows and MCP are roadmap or private preview, not generally available
Which should you choose?
Continue is open-source ai code assistant and agent for vs code and jetbrains, best for developers, mid-market, enterprise. Tabby is self-hosted, open-source ai coding assistant for privacy-conscious teams, best for developers, 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 Continue and Tabby profiles. Open either profile to review its evidence and last-reviewed date.