Self-Hosted Alternatives to GitHub Copilot
Why Replace GitHub Copilot?
Cost: GitHub Copilot costs $10-19/month per developer ($120-228/year). For a team of 5 developers, that’s $600-1,140/year. Self-hosted code completion is free after the hardware investment.
Privacy: Copilot sends your code to GitHub/Microsoft servers for processing. If you work with proprietary code, sensitive algorithms, or client data, self-hosted alternatives keep everything on your infrastructure.
Control: Microsoft can change Copilot’s model, pricing, or policies at any time. They’ve already changed what’s included in different tiers. Self-hosted solutions are yours to control.
Compliance: Some organizations (government, healthcare, finance) prohibit sending code to third-party cloud services. Self-hosted code AI satisfies these compliance requirements.
Best Alternatives
Tabby — Best Dedicated Server
Tabby is a self-hosted code completion server with an admin dashboard, user management, and repository indexing. It indexes your codebase for context-aware suggestions — the closest experience to Copilot’s repo-aware completions.
IDE support: VS Code, JetBrains, Vim/Neovim.
Requires: NVIDIA GPU with 4+ GB VRAM (or CPU mode, slower).
Read our Tabby guide | Tabby vs Continue
Continue.dev + Ollama — Best Flexible Setup
Continue.dev is an open-source VS Code / JetBrains extension that connects to any LLM backend. Pair it with Ollama for a completely self-hosted setup. You get chat, autocomplete, and inline editing powered by any model Ollama supports.
Advantages over Tabby: Use different models for different tasks (fast small model for autocomplete, large model for chat). No dedicated server needed — just Ollama running locally or on a server.
IDE support: VS Code, JetBrains.
vLLM — Best for Team Serving
vLLM serves code models to multiple developers simultaneously with high throughput. Pair with Continue.dev extensions for a team-scale setup.
Best for: Teams of 5+ developers who need fast, concurrent code completions.
Migration Guide
From Copilot to Tabby
- Deploy Tabby on a machine with an NVIDIA GPU
- Add your repositories in Tabby’s admin dashboard for context indexing
- Install the Tabby extension in VS Code or JetBrains
- Point the extension at your Tabby server URL
- Disable GitHub Copilot extension to avoid conflicts
From Copilot to Continue + Ollama
- Install Ollama on your development machine or a server
- Pull a code model:
ollama pull deepseek-coder-v2:16b - Pull a fast model for autocomplete:
ollama pull starcoder2:3b - Install Continue.dev extension in VS Code
- Configure Continue to use your Ollama instance
- Disable GitHub Copilot extension
Cost Comparison
| Copilot Individual | Copilot Business | Self-Hosted (Tabby) | Self-Hosted (Continue + Ollama) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly (per dev) | $10/month | $19/month | $0 | $0 |
| Annual (5 devs) | $600/year | $1,140/year | ~$120/year (electricity) | ~$60/year (electricity) |
| 3-year (5 devs) | $1,800 | $3,420 | $360 + hardware | $180 + hardware |
| GPU cost | $0 | $0 | $300-800 (once) | $0-800 (optional) |
| Code privacy | No | Partial | Complete | Complete |
| Internet required | Yes | Yes | No | No |
What You Give Up
- Model quality: Copilot uses GPT-4-class models fine-tuned specifically for code. Open-source code models (StarCoder, DeepSeek Coder) are good but not quite at the same level for complex multi-file completions.
- Speed: Copilot runs on Microsoft’s infrastructure — completions are fast regardless of your hardware. Self-hosted speed depends on your GPU.
- Multi-file context: Copilot can reference your entire workspace through GitHub’s infrastructure. Self-hosted alternatives have improving but more limited context windows.
- GitHub integration: Copilot integrates with GitHub PRs, issues, and repos. Self-hosted alternatives don’t have this integration.
- Chat: Copilot Chat is tightly integrated with the IDE. Continue.dev provides similar functionality, Tabby is more focused on completions.
- Zero maintenance: Copilot just works. Self-hosted requires managing a model server, updates, and hardware.
For most code completion tasks — inline completions, function generation, docstrings — self-hosted alternatives work well. Complex multi-file refactoring is where Copilot still has an edge.
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