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AI Code Comparison

GitHub Copilot vs. Refact.ai

At a glance

At a glance

GitHub Copilot

Best for

Best for teams that live in GitHub and want one vendor for hosting, CI/CD and AI assistance.

  • Freelancers
  • Small and mid-sized
  • Enterprise

Refact.ai

Best for

Best for developers who want an agent, chat and autocomplete in one open-source tool, with a self-hosted option for privacy.

  • Freelancers
  • Small and mid-sized
  • Enterprise

Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.

Full Comparison

Criterion GitHub Copilot Refact.ai
Starting price Free tier; Pro $10 / month The free tier covers 2,000 completions per month. Pro+ $39 per month, Enterprise $39 per user. Billing moved to usage-based AI Credits on 1 June 2026. Free tier; Pro $10 / month The free plan includes unlimited completions and limited daily agent use. Enterprise is custom, with on-premise deployment and fine-tuning.
Free trial Free tier with 2,000 completions per month Free tier
Commercial use Yes, with IP indemnity Yes
Output Completions plus agent mode Agentic coding, chat and completion in the IDE
API Yes, the GitHub Copilot SDK, with examples in TypeScript, Python, Go, .NET, Java and Rust, plus an API for the cloud coding agent Bring your own key
Hosting Not stated Cloud or self-hosted on-premise
Where it runs Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, the JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, Xcode, Vim and Neovim and Azure Data Studio, plus GitHub.com, GitHub Mobile and the GitHub CLI Plugins for VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, with Visual Studio, Neovim and Sublime Text in beta
Inline completions Yes, inline completions and chat Yes, real-time completion on Qwen2.5-Coder with retrieval for context
Agent mode Yes, agent mode from issue to pull request Yes, an autonomous agent that plans and executes multi-step tasks
Model choice Yes, models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, Moonshot AI and Microsoft; which ones are offered depends on the plan and the client Claude and GPT models built in, plus bring-your-own-key for Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek
Data control Business and Enterprise customer data is not used to train models; a duplicate-detection filter blocks suggestions matching about 150 characters of public code, and free and individual plans carry a training opt-out Self-hosted, on-premise deployment keeps code private
Ecosystem fit GitHub, one vendor for hosting, CI/CD and AI IDE plugins across VS Code and JetBrains, open source with a self-hosted server
Deployment Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Cloud (SaaS), On-premise
Support Email helpdesk, Community forum Not stated
Onboarding Documentation and knowledge base Documentation and knowledge base
Company size Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
Integrations Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, Xcode, Vim/Neovim, Azure Data Studio, GitHub.com, GitHub Mobile, GitHub CLI, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Raycast Not stated

Compare more tools

Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.

The short version

Key Differences

  • Free trial GitHub Copilot Free tier with 2,000 completions per month Refact.ai Free tier
  • Deployment GitHub Copilot Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Refact.ai Cloud (SaaS), On-premise
  • Commercial use GitHub Copilot Yes, with IP indemnity Refact.ai Yes
  • Output GitHub Copilot Completions plus agent mode Refact.ai Agentic coding, chat and completion in the IDE
  • API GitHub Copilot Yes, the GitHub Copilot SDK, with examples in TypeScript, Python, Go, .NET, Java and Rust, plus an API for the cloud coding agent Refact.ai Bring your own key

Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

GitHub Copilot

Strengths

  • Most widely adopted and easy to get approved
  • Widest IDE support
  • Free tier
  • IP indemnity

Limitations

  • Agent and multi-file orchestration trail Cursor and Claude Code
  • New usage-based credits can raise heavy-use cost

Refact.ai

Strengths

  • Open source with a self-hosted, on-premise option
  • Agent, chat and completion in one plugin
  • Broad model choice through bring-your-own-key

Limitations

  • Free plan caps daily agent runs
  • Some IDE plugins are still in beta

Plans

Pricing

GitHub Copilot

  • Free $0 2,000 completions per month.
  • Pro $10 Per month.
  • Pro+ $39 Per month.
  • Enterprise $39 Per user.
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Refact.ai

  • Free $0 Unlimited completions, limited daily agent use, 32k context chat.
  • Pro $10 Per month. 40 agent requests per day, 64k context chat.
  • Enterprise Not stated Custom. On-premise deployment and fine-tuning.
Visit site

What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

GitHub Copilot

Ease of use
Not rated yet
User interface
Not rated yet
Onboarding
Not rated yet
Support and service
Not rated yet
Value for money
Not rated yet
Features
Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

Refact.ai

Ease of use
Not rated yet
User interface
Not rated yet
Onboarding
Not rated yet
Support and service
Not rated yet
Value for money
Not rated yet
Features
Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

How we check reviews

Reviews are not published yet. The form on a tool's page works and reaches us, but nothing from it appears on this site, so no score here is based on a review. The rules below are the ones that will apply once reviews go live.

Every review is read by a person before it appears. We require a working email address and use it to come back to the author, so a review has a reachable sender rather than being anonymous. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.

What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on what they tell us, plus the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.

A vendor cannot have a review removed, cannot buy one, and cannot have one changed. Paid placement and a paid listing have no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.

Where this comes from

Where this comes from

GitHub Copilot https://github.com/features/copilot · no check date recorded yet

Refact.ai https://refact.ai · no check date recorded yet

This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.