AI Coding Tools
Free tiers here range from a token trial to a fully usable daily driver. Cline is the strongest of them and is not a tier at all: it is open source, and you pay only your model provider. Bolt.new and Lovable both give you enough to build something real once before asking for money, which in this half of the market is the only way to judge them. GitHub Copilot and Windsurf are capped but enough to form an opinion. All of these let you do real work without paying, which matters in a category where the only reliable evaluation is a fortnight on your own projects.
Best for developers who want to approve each step and choose the model they pay for
Cline is an open-source coding agent for VS Code, JetBrains IDEs and the terminal, for developers who want to approve each step and pick their own model. The agent itself is free; you pay Cline or a provider for inference.
Free plan
starting price
Best for developers who want an AI editor and cloud agents on one subscription
Windsurf is an AI code editor from Cognition, now sold as Devin Desktop, for developers who want a local agent and Devin cloud sessions on one plan. Its free plan keeps Tab completions and inline edits unlimited.
Free plan
paid from $20/mo
Best for GitHub-based teams whose developers use more than one editor
GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant for VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode and Eclipse, suited to teams that keep their code on GitHub. Its cloud agent takes assigned issues and works in a GitHub Actions environment.
Free plan
paid from $10/mo
Best for prototypes and internal tools built by someone who can read JavaScript
Bolt.new is a browser-based AI builder for websites, web apps and Expo mobile apps, suited to fast prototypes by people who can read code. It runs a Node.js environment in the browser tab, and editing code by hand costs no tokens.
Free plan
paid from $18/mo
Best for non-developers building customer-facing web apps
Lovable is an AI app builder that turns a plain-language description into a full-stack web app, with a built-in backend, Git sync and one-click publishing. It suits people who do not write code but need a product customers will use.
Free plan
paid from $21/mo
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AI Coding Tools by the numbers
$19/mo
Median starting price
0%
Offer a free trial
100%
Have a free plan
5
Products tracked
Computed from the published pricing of the 5 AI Coding Tools products in this list. Pricing last checked against vendor pages October 3, 2026.
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