Continue
Plug any LLM into VS Code or JetBrains and swap models mid-conversation without leaving your editor. Acquired by Cursor in 2026, the project is winding down with a July 15, 2026 data export deadline.
Alternatives
Overview
Continue is an open-source coding AI extension for VS Code and JetBrains that provides chat, autocomplete, and codebase-aware editing assistance while remaining fully configurable, connecting to any LLM provider rather than being locked into a single vendor's model. The provider-agnostic design enables teams to use Anthropic Claude for complex refactoring, a fast Groq-hosted Llama model for autocomplete latency, and a local Ollama model for privacy-sensitive codebases, all within the same editor experience. Codebase indexing gives the AI awareness of your full repository, enabling context-aware answers to questions like 'where is this function called?' or 'how does authentication work in this project?' without manually providing file contents.
Tab autocomplete integrates with the editor's suggestion system, providing multi-line completions that understand surrounding code context. The edit mode applies changes to specific selected code regions based on a natural language instruction, enabling targeted refactoring without regenerating entire files. With 22,000+ GitHub stars, Continue is a widely adopted open-source coding AI for developers who want flexibility over their model selection, privacy over their codebase data, or prefer JetBrains tools where Cursor and Windsurf don't operate.
Configuration is file-based (config.json), enabling team-wide model and provider settings through version control.
Key Features
- Multi-model support
- VS Code and JetBrains
- Local LLM integration
- Codebase indexing
- Inline edit commands
- Custom context providers
- • Fully open-source with active development
- • Works with local models for complete privacy
- • Supports JetBrains, unlike most AI coding tools
- • Setup requires API key configuration
- • No built-in free model tier
People Also Use
Other Coding tools builders reach for alongside Continue.
Replit
Replit Agent 3 autonomously builds, tests, and deploys full-stack apps from plain-language prompts, running continuously and connecting to 160+ third-party services.
Tabnine
Run enterprise-grade code completion and agentic coding with your choice of LLM (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Mistral) and deployment model — SaaS, VPC, on-prem, or air-gapped.
Bolt.new
Generate, run, and deploy full-stack web apps directly in the browser using WebContainers — no local setup required. Token-metered pricing with unused tokens rolling over one month.
Blackbox AI
Route each coding task across multiple frontier models via the Chairman LLM router, working across 35+ IDEs plus its own IDE and CLI.
Windsurf
An agentic coding IDE pairing an editor with autonomous coding agents — renamed Devin Desktop after Cognition AI's acquisition, keeping the same editor and Claude/GPT/Gemini model choice.
V0 by Vercel
Turn natural-language prompts into deployable React and Next.js front-end code, tightly integrated with Vercel hosting. Pricing shifted to metered token billing across four model tiers.