Side-by-side comparison
Compare AI Tools
Pick two to five tools. Every cell comes from a verified record; anything unverified says so. There is no overall winner — the right choice depends on your task, budget and technical needs.
| Criterion | OpenAI Codex | Claude Code | GitHub Copilot | Cursor | Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Anthropic | GitHub | Anysphere (part of SpaceX since August 2026) | Cognition |
| What it is for | OpenAI's coding agent, included with ChatGPT plans and usable with an API key. | Anthropic's agentic coding tool that reads your codebase, edits files and runs commands from the terminal, IDE, desktop or browser. | An AI pair programmer and coding agent that works in your editor, terminal and on GitHub itself. | An AI-first code editor with local and cloud agents, now sold on a shared Cursor and Grok subscription. | The renamed Windsurf editor, rebuilt around managing local and cloud coding agents. |
| Latest confirmed model | GPT-6.1 Sol Sep 29, 2026 | Claude Opus 5.5 Sep 22, 2026 | — | Grok 4.7 Sep 21, 2026 | SWE-2 Sep 10, 2026 |
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| Free plan | Yes Quick coding tasks | No | Yes 2,000 inline suggestions per month; 50 chat requests; limited chat and agent usage | Yes Limited AI usage; limited agent and Chat requests | Yes Light agent quota; unlimited Tab completions and inline edits |
| Cheapest paid plan | Go: $8/mo | Pro: $20/mo $17/mo billed annually Annual billing is $200 up front | Pro: $10/mo | Plus: $8/mo | Pro: $20/mo |
| API access | Yes · docs (opens in a new tab) | Yes · docs (opens in a new tab) | No · docs (opens in a new tab) | Limited · docs (opens in a new tab) | Limited |
| Learning curve | Some experience helps | Some experience helps | Beginner-friendly | Some experience helps | Some experience helps |
| Last verified | Oct 19, 2026 | Oct 19, 2026 | Oct 19, 2026 | Oct 19, 2026 | Oct 19, 2026 |
How to choose
Start from the rows that matter for your job: a free plan and learning curve for casual use; API access, rates and data terms for building products; context window and modalities for long documents or images. Provider claims are labelled as such; we do not rank.
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