Choosing an AI coding assistant starts with the meter, because the meter is what turns a quiet month into an expensive one. GitHub Copilot bills a flat seat — Pro $10, Pro+ $39, Max $100, Business $19 per seat — plus a credit pool where flex allotments lift Pro to $15 and Max to $200 in monthly credits at $0.01 per credit. Cursor bills $20 for Individual across its Pro, Pro+ and Ultra ladder, then caps agent requests and switches to usage-based overage; Teams is $40 per user. Claude Code bills $17 a month on annual for Pro, opens Max at $100, and is the only one here with an API-only path at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens for Sonnet 5.5. Windsurf sells fixed daily and weekly quotas at $20, with Teams at $80 for the plan plus $40 per full developer seat. Kiro, AWS's spec-driven IDE, publishes a credit ladder: 50 free, 1,000 at $20, 10,000 at $200, with add-on credits at $0.04 — and it replaces Amazon Q Developer's IDE role after Q closed to new signups on 2026-05-15. Free tiers are equally uneven: Copilot includes CLI and agent mode, Kiro gives 50 credits, Cursor gives limited agent requests, Windsurf gives a light daily quota with unlimited tab completion, and Claude Code's free plan is chat rather than an agent. Decision: cheapest capable seat buys Copilot; deepest agent loop buys Cursor; terminal-first and high volume buys Claude Code; forecastable quotas buy Windsurf; AWS standardization buys Kiro. Prices re-checked on the date shown.
4.4/5: Free $0 with CLI + agent mode; Pro $10, Pro+ $39, Max $100, Business $19/seat. Credit pools add $5/$31/$100 flex at $0.01 per credit.
Free tier: Yes
Paid from: $10/mo (Pro) (Usage is metered on a two-track credit system: each plan carries base credits (Pro $10/mo, Pro+ $39/mo, Max $100/mo) plus a variable flex allotment (Pro $5, Pro+ $31, Max $100), so the Pro+ total reaches $70 and the Max total $200 in monthly AI credits. One AI credit equals $0.01. Pooled organization credits are included on team tiers.)
GitHub Copilot is the IDE-native default: free for personal use, Pro at $10 a month, Pro+ at $39 and Max at $100, with a separate credit meter for agent usage on top of the plan price.
4.5/5: Hobby $0; Individual $20/mo across Pro/Pro+/Ultra with frontier models, MCPs and cloud agents; Teams $40/user; usage-based overage above caps.
Free tier: Yes
Paid from: $20/mo (Individual) (Subscription tiers carry limits on agent requests, frontier-model access and cloud agents; overage is billed on a usage basis. Teams adds centralized billing, SSO, team marketplaces and a team-wide privacy mode; Enterprise adds pooled usage, SCIM and audit logs.)
Cursor is the agentic editor: a free Hobby tier, Individual from $20 a month across Pro, Pro+ and Ultra, Teams at $40 per user, and usage-based billing above the limits.
4.5/5: Pro $17/mo annual ($20 monthly); Max from $100 ($200 monthly); Sonnet 5.5 API at $2 input / $10 output per MTok with no seat fee.
Free tier: Yes
Paid from: $17/mo annual (Pro) (Claude Code is reachable three ways: bundled into a Pro or Max subscription, as a team seat, or API-only at per-token rates (Sonnet 5.5: $2 input / $10 output per million tokens; Opus 5.5: $4 / $20), which is cheaper than any flat seat once usage is high.)
Claude Code is the model-native terminal agent: it runs inside Claude Pro at $20 a month, Claude Max from $100, or straight off the API at per-token rates with no seat fee.
4.0/5: Free light daily quota with unlimited tab completion; Pro $20, Max $200; Teams $80/mo + $40 per full seat; SWE-1.5 and cloud agents.
Free tier: Yes
Paid from: $20/mo (Pro) (Pricing is quota-based, not credit-based: each tier carries daily and weekly agent quotas and access to model families including SWE-1.5, Claude and GPT. Cloud agents and CLI access extend to Pro through a dated promotion, and Extra Usage is bought at API pricing above the quota.)
Windsurf, now part of Cognition, is the quota-priced editor: free with a light agent quota, Pro at $20, Max at $200, and Teams at $80 plus $40 per full developer seat.
3.9/5: Free 50 credits; Pro $20 (1,000 credits), Pro+ $40 (2,000), Pro Max $100 (5,000), Power $200 (10,000); add-ons $0.04/credit; spec-driven.
Free tier: Yes · New signups get a 14-day 500-credit bonus; first paid upgrade via social login or AWS Builder ID credits $20
Paid from: $20/user/mo (Pro) (Kiro absorbed Amazon Q Developer's IDE role (Q Developer closed to new signups on 2026-05-15, end of support 2027-04-30). Credits are a unit of agent work, not a single interaction: a full spec run consumes 15 to 25 credits, add-on credits cost $0.04 each, and paid tiers can pool overages for teams.)
Kiro is AWS's spec-driven IDE: free with 50 credits a month, then Pro at $20, Pro+ at $40, Pro Max at $100 and Power at $200 per user, with overage at $0.04 per credit.
Bottom line: Cursor (4.5) leads on agent capability; Claude Code (4.5) on terminal work and API economics; GitHub Copilot (4.4) on price and GitHub-native flow; Windsurf (4.0) on predictable quotas; Kiro (3.9) on AWS standardization and spec-first workflow. Buy the meter first: a seat you can cap (Copilot, Cursor), tokens you can scale (Claude Code), a quota you cannot overrun (Windsurf) or published credits (Kiro).
GitHub Copilot, which includes CLI and agent mode on its free plan. Kiro gives 50 credits a month, Windsurf gives a light daily agent quota with unlimited tab completions, Cursor gives limited agent requests, and Claude Code's free plan is chat rather than a coding agent.
GitHub Copilot Pro at $10 a month, and Copilot Business at $19 per seat for teams. Claude Code Pro is next at $17 a month on annual billing; Cursor, Windsurf and Kiro all enter at $20.
Claude Code, because its API path at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens for Sonnet 5.5 has no seat ceiling. Cursor has the deepest agent features but bills usage-based above its request caps.
The plan price is $39, and the GitHub AI Credits pool includes $31 of flex allotment on top, so a heavy month reaches $70 in monthly credits. Credits are drawn at $0.01 each and can be budget-capped.
Kiro. It is AWS's spec-driven IDE, routes through Bedrock to Claude and Amazon Nova, publishes a credit ladder from free 50 credits to Power at $200, and replaces Amazon Q Developer after that product closed to new signups on 2026-05-15.
Yes. Windsurf continues under Cognition with the same product line; pricing changes are announced through Cognition's Devin blog rather than a separate Windsurf channel.
GitHub Copilot Business at $19 per seat, including pooled organization credits. Cursor Teams is $40 per user, Windsurf Teams is $80 for the plan plus $40 per full seat, and Kiro paid tiers support teams up to 500 users.