Best for
Best for developers who want an open-source agent and want to pay for model calls at cost.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Code Comparison
Kilo Code vs. Refact.ai
At a glance
At a glance
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 | Kilo Code | Refact.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free and open source; Teams $15 / user / month Inference is billed separately: exact provider rates through the Kilo Gateway with no markup, your own keys, or an optional Kilo Pass credit subscription at $19, $49 or $199 a month. Enterprise is quoted. Cloud compute is billed per second, Gas Town at $1.20 an hour and code review at $0.33. | lower value 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 plan for individuals; a 14-day Enterprise trial for teams | Free tier |
| Commercial use | Yes, the source is MIT licensed | Yes |
| Output | Code, refactors, pull-request reviews and agent sessions | Agentic coding, chat and completion in the IDE |
| API | Yes, the Kilo Gateway is a single endpoint to hundreds of models, with streaming, BYOK and usage tracking | Bring your own key |
| Hosting | Cloud (SaaS), with editor extensions and a CLI on your own machine | Cloud or self-hosted on-premise |
| Where it runs | VS Code extension, JetBrains plugin for IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm and others, a CLI installed with npm, cloud agents, Slack and mobile apps | Plugins for VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, with Visual Studio, Neovim and Sublime Text in beta |
| Inline completions | Yes, fill-in-the-middle autocomplete routed through the Kilo Gateway, on by default as ghost text accepted with Tab, using Codestral by default or Mercury Edit 2 with your own Inception key; a status bar item snoozes it | Yes, real-time completion on Qwen2.5-Coder with retrieval for context |
| Agent mode | Yes, Code, Architect, Debug, Ask and custom modes, an automated pull-request code reviewer, and an Agent Manager running parallel worktree-isolated local and cloud sessions | Yes, an autonomous agent that plans and executes multi-step tasks |
| Model choice | Yes, more than 500 models across over 60 providers through the Kilo Gateway, Auto Model routing across Frontier, Efficient and Free tiers, your own Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Azure or AWS Bedrock keys, and local models with Ollama or LM Studio | Claude and GPT models built in, plus bring-your-own-key for Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek |
| Data control | MIT-licensed source with the prompt and context window open to inspection and no silent model switching; Teams adds data privacy controls and shared BYOK, Enterprise adds SSO, OIDC and SCIM, audit logs and limits on which models and providers may be used | Self-hosted, on-premise deployment keeps code private |
| Ecosystem fit | MCP servers, GitHub integration for automated pull-request reviews, plugins, shell integration, custom rules and shared agent modes | IDE plugins across VS Code and JetBrains, open source with a self-hosted server |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | Cloud (SaaS), On-premise |
| Support | 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 | GitHub, Slack, Ollama, LM Studio | Not stated |
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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
- Starting price Kilo Code Free and open source; Teams $15 / user / month Refact.ai Free tier; Pro $10 / month
- Free trial Kilo Code Free plan for individuals; a 14-day Enterprise trial for teams Refact.ai Free tier
- Deployment Kilo Code Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Refact.ai Cloud (SaaS), On-premise
- Hosting Kilo Code Cloud (SaaS), with editor extensions and a CLI on your own machine Refact.ai Cloud or self-hosted on-premise
- Commercial use Kilo Code Yes, the source is MIT licensed Refact.ai Yes
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Kilo Code
Strengths
- MIT licensed, with the prompt, context window and decisions open to inspection
- Model calls billed at exact provider rates with no markup, or run on your own keys and local models
- One account across VS Code, JetBrains, the CLI, cloud agents, Slack and mobile
Limitations
- Usage is metered per model call rather than per seat, so budgeting takes attention
- Kilo Deploy has reached end of life and is closed to new users
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
Kilo Code
- Free & Open Source $0 For individuals. Open-source VS Code, JetBrains and CLI extensions; usage is billed separately.
- Teams $15 Per user per month. Usage analytics, shared agent modes, shared BYOK, centralised billing, data privacy controls and priority support.
- Enterprise Custom SSO, OIDC and SCIM, audit logs, model and provider limits, a shared private gateway and SLA commitments.
- Kilo Pass From $19 Per month. Optional credit subscription for inference, at $19, $49 or $199, with up to 50 percent bonus credits.
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.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Kilo Code
- 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
Kilo Code https://kilo.ai · checked against the official source on 2026-09-10
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.