Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated 2026-07-12 · Hardware figures computed by our VRAM engine
Continue.dev plus Ollama is the closest full Copilot replacement — autocomplete, chat, and inline edits, fully offline, free. Tabby is the pick for teams wanting one self-hosted completion server; Cline and Aider go beyond Copilot into autonomous multi-file agents; Twinny is the minimal autocomplete-only option. Every one of them can run with zero code leaving your machine.
GitHub Copilot costs $10/month per seat and streams your code to Microsoft's servers on every keystroke. In 2026 neither is necessary: open-weight coding models within striking distance of Copilot's quality run on consumer GPUs, and a mature tool ecosystem wires them into VS Code, JetBrains, and the terminal.
The useful distinction isn't "open vs closed" — it's fully offline vs hybrid. Fully offline means the tool talks only to a model server on localhost (Ollama, LM Studio, or Tabby's own runtime): airplane-proof, NDA-proof, $0/month. Hybrid means an open tool that *can* use local models but is typically pointed at cloud APIs — you keep tool freedom but not necessarily privacy. Each entry below is labeled. For what to run them *on*, see the model tier list; for click-by-click setup, the end-to-end guide.
Fully offline capable · VS Code + JetBrains · Apache 2.0
Continue is the most complete like-for-like Copilot replacement: ghost-text autocomplete, highlight-and-chat, and inline edit commands, each independently mappable to a different local model — a 3B FIM model for completions, a 27B for chat. Config is one YAML file; the Ollama provider is first-class. It's the tool this hub's setup guide builds on, and the right first install for an individual developer leaving Copilot.
What you give up vs Copilot: completion quality tracks the local model you choose — on an 8 GB card expect "very good", not "uncanny". What you gain: total privacy, offline operation, model choice, and no subscription.
Fully offline · own server + IDE plugins · Apache 2.0
Tabby inverts the architecture: instead of every developer configuring a model stack, you deploy one completion server (Docker image, bundled models, built-in repo indexing) and the team connects via lightweight VS Code/JetBrains/Vim plugins. One RTX 4090-class box serves a whole team's completions — replacing a stack of Copilot Business seats with hardware that pays for itself in months.
It's completion-and-chat focused rather than agentic, and its bundled models trail the best open coders — the trade for zero-config clients and central control. For a solo developer, Continue is simpler; for a team lead standardizing "no code leaves the building", Tabby is the answer.
Hybrid (local-capable) · VS Code · Apache 2.0
Cline doesn't imitate Copilot — it supersedes the category: describe a task and it plans, edits multiple files, runs terminal commands, and presents diffs for approval, with MCP support for extending its tool access. Pointed at Ollama it's fully local; in practice much of its community runs it hybrid against frontier APIs, because agentic autonomy is exactly where model capability bites hardest.
Honest guidance: on a 24 GB card with Qwen 3.6 27B or Devstral-2 22B, local Cline handles well-scoped tasks. On smaller hardware, use Continue for assist and keep Cline for the days you're willing to pay API rates — the local-vs-cloud economics change when every task burns 100K agent-loop tokens.
Hybrid (local-capable) · CLI, any editor · Apache 2.0
Aider lives in your terminal and works at the git level: it maps your repo, applies model-generated edits as clean commits, and doesn't care what editor you use. With aider --model ollama_chat/qwen3.6:27b it runs fully local. It rewards developers who already live in the shell — and its commit-per-change workflow makes model mistakes trivially revertible, which matters more with local models than with frontier ones.
Like Cline, it shines brightest with strong models; unlike Cline, there's no GUI safety net, so start with small asks while you calibrate trust in your local model.
Fully offline · VS Code · MIT
If all you want from Copilot is the ghost text, Twinny is a small VS Code extension that does FIM completions (plus basic chat) against Ollama and nothing else — no accounts, no config sprawl. Paired with StarCoder2 3B or Qwen3-Coder 8B it delivers instant completions on modest hardware. You'll outgrow it when you want chat-with-codebase or agents; until then it's the lightest possible on-ramp.
All four fully-offline paths need a model under them — that's the VRAM tier list. And if your hardware can't carry the model your workflow needs, a rented 24–48 GB GPU is a $2 experiment before any purchase.
Not sure your GPU is up to it? Rent the exact tier for an afternoon — every provider on our cloud directory bills by the hour.
Full list on the cloud AI directory.