Continue

3.6 (10)

Continue (continue.dev) is an open-source AI coding extension for VS Code and JetBrains that lets you plug in any model — Claude, GPT-5, Gemini, or a fully local Ollama instance — with no subscription fee. The extension is free and Apache 2.0 licensed, but "free" depends entirely on which models you bring to the table and how heavily you use them.

Free From $20/mo (Team)

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Overview Reviews Alternatives

Last Updated: April 26, 2026

SRG Bottom Line

One-Line Verdict: Continue is the right tool for freelance developers who want Cursor-caliber AI coding without the $20/month subscription and without surrendering control over which model runs, where code goes, and how the assistant behaves — but if you want something that works in five minutes flat without touching a config file, Cursor or Copilot will serve you better.

What is Continue?

Continue (continue.dev) is an open-source AI coding assistant built by Continue, Inc., a San Francisco-based company founded in 2023. It installs as an extension in VS Code and JetBrains IDEs and adds autocomplete, inline edits, chat, and agent-mode capabilities to your existing editor — without requiring you to switch to a new IDE or pay a subscription for core functionality.

The defining characteristic is model flexibility: Continue connects to any AI provider through your own API keys — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, DeepSeek — or to a fully local model running through Ollama, with no code ever leaving your machine. The extension has 2.5 million+ VS Code installs and 32,000+ GitHub stars as of April 2026, making it one of the most widely adopted open-source AI coding tools available.

Its product has also quietly pivoted beyond pure IDE assistance into CI/CD territory, with PR-level AI quality checks and agentic Mission Control workflows that run background agents on schedules and triggers.

At Smart Remote Gigs, I’ve been running Continue as a daily driver across two client projects — a TypeScript API service and a Python data pipeline — specifically testing it against Cline and Cursor to answer the question that matters to freelancers: is the setup overhead worth the cost savings and the control? The short answer is yes, with a specific caveat about what “free” actually means when you’re routing Claude Sonnet at $3 per million input tokens through a BYOK setup.

🚀 Key Features for Freelancers

Bring Your Own Model — Any Model
Continue connects to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek, Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and xAI through your own API keys, with no markup or platform fee on top. You pay the model provider directly at their published API rates — Claude Sonnet 4.6 at $3/$15 per million tokens, GPT-5 at $10/$30, or run DeepSeek-Coder V2 locally via Ollama at $0/month. For a freelancer doing moderate AI coding work, routing through the cheapest capable model can reduce your effective monthly AI spend to under $15 — less than Copilot, with more model flexibility than Cursor.

Fully Local / Air-Gapped Mode with Ollama
Configure Continue with a local Ollama model and your code never touches an external server. Qwen2.5-Coder 32B and DeepSeek-Coder-V2 are both capable enough for production coding tasks and run entirely on-device. For freelancers handling confidential client codebases — legal, financial, healthcare — this is the cleanest possible answer to the “where does my client’s code go?” question: nowhere, it stays on your machine.

Multi-Model Task Routing
Continue lets you configure different models for different tasks in the same session — a fast, cheap model (DeepSeek-V3) for inline autocomplete, a reasoning-heavy model (Claude Opus 4.6 or o3) for complex refactoring chat, and a different model again for agent-mode tasks. No other IDE extension at this price point offers this level of routing granularity. In practice, I set autocomplete to a local Ollama model and chat to Claude Sonnet and shaved about $40/month off my API costs versus routing everything through Sonnet.

CI/CD PR Quality Checks (Mission Control)
Continue’s newer Mission Control platform runs AI agents as GitHub status checks on every pull request — enforcing code standards, catching security vulnerabilities, flagging documentation gaps — automatically, without a developer manually triggering anything. For freelancers delivering code to clients who have quality standards baked into their GitHub workflow, being able to propose Continue-powered automated quality gates is a genuine service differentiator that clients in regulated industries will pay for.

Fully Configurable Context and Prompts via YAML
Continue’s behavior is configured through a plain-text YAML file — which context sources to include, how prompts are structured, which tools agents can call, which MCP servers to connect to. For freelance developers who do the same types of projects repeatedly, building a project-specific Continue configuration that bakes in your client’s code style and context sources means every new engagement starts with a pre-tuned assistant rather than a blank slate.

🗣️ Voice of the Street: “I set autocomplete to a local Qwen model and chat to Claude Sonnet. My monthly AI spend dropped from $65 to about $18 with zero quality loss on the work I actually bill for.” – u/FreelanceDev_Tomas, Reddit

⚖️ Pros & Cons

✅ The Good:

The extension is genuinely free — Apache 2.0, no feature gates, no watermarks, no trial expiry. 2.5 million developers use it at $0/month for core IDE functionality.
Full model flexibility including 100% local, air-gapped operation via Ollama — the strongest privacy posture of any IDE extension in this comparison, and it costs nothing beyond compute.
Multi-model routing lets you assign the cheapest capable model to each task type, which meaningfully reduces BYOK API costs versus routing everything through a frontier model.
Works in both VS Code and JetBrains natively — unlike Cline (VS Code only) and unlike Cursor (its own IDE fork), Continue installs in the editor you already use.
Apache 2.0 license means you can audit exactly what the extension does, fork it, and in regulated environments, demonstrate to client security teams that the codebase is fully inspectable.

❌ The Bad (The Catch):

“Free” is conditional. The extension costs nothing, but heavy users routing through Claude Sonnet or GPT-5 pay $50–200/month in raw API costs — more than a Cursor or Copilot subscription in some usage patterns. You need to budget API spend carefully or use local models to keep costs predictable.
Setup is not plug-and-play. Connecting your first model requires editing a YAML config file, obtaining and entering API keys, and understanding the difference between your chat model and your autocomplete model. Cursor takes 5 minutes from download to first suggestion. Continue can take 30–90 minutes to configure well for a first-time user.
Continue has pivoted product focus toward CI/CD and Mission Control in 2025–2026 — some users on Reddit report feeling like the IDE extension is no longer the primary development focus, with agentic features getting more attention than inline autocomplete polish.
No inline tab autocomplete as strong as Copilot or Cursor out of the box — Continue’s autocomplete is configurable and works well once tuned, but the default experience trails Cursor’s Composer and Copilot’s native suggestions in side-by-side testing.
The Team plan at $20/seat/month includes $10 in monthly model credits per seat — but the Solo (free) tier requires you to bring your own API keys for every model access, with no included credits.

💰 Pricing Breakdown (Is it worth it?)

The core Continue extension is free with no time limit, no feature lock, and no credit card required — that’s real, not a demo trap. The actual cost question is your API spend. A light user doing 50–100 chat queries and moderate autocomplete per day on Claude Sonnet will spend roughly $15–25/month in API costs. A heavy user doing complex agent-mode sessions on frontier models can hit $100–200/month.

Switching to a local Ollama model for autocomplete and a cheaper provider for routine chat can bring that down to under $10/month for most solo freelancers. The Team plan at $20/seat/month adds $10 in model credits, team agent management, and shared API key governance — worth it for a small agency running Continue across multiple contractors, not worth it for a solo developer who can manage their own keys.

Plan	Price	Limits/Credits	Best For
Solo (Free)	$0	Full extension, full agent access, no model credits included — BYOK required for all model access, unlimited usage once configured	Solo freelance developers who are comfortable configuring API keys and want full model control at zero subscription cost
Team	$20/seat/mo	Everything in Solo + $10/mo model credits per seat, shared private agents, API key management, team agent governance	Small dev agencies or freelance teams who want centralized Continue configuration and shared model credits without each developer managing their own keys
Company (Enterprise)	Custom — contact sales	Everything in Team + SSO (SAML/OIDC), BYOK at org level, on-premises data plane, custom SLA	Freelancers embedded in enterprise client teams that need SSO, data residency controls, and a formal SLA for AI tooling
Local Ollama Setup (BYOM)	$0/mo (compute only)	Run Qwen2.5-Coder 32B, DeepSeek-Coder-V2, or Code Llama locally — fully air-gapped, no API costs, performance depends on local hardware	Privacy-focused freelancers handling confidential client code who need a provably local-only AI coding setup with no external API calls

⚔️ The Kill-Matrix: Continue vs Competitors

Continue wins on price, privacy, and configurability — but Cursor is still ahead on out-of-the-box polish, and Cline is ahead on autonomous agentic task execution for developers who don’t need inline completions.

Feature	Continue	Cursor	Cline
Price (Core Tool)	Free — Apache 2.0, no subscription	$20/mo Pro (proprietary IDE)	Free — Apache 2.0, no subscription
Effective Monthly Cost	$0–200 depending on model usage	$20/mo flat (models included up to limits)	$0–200 depending on model usage
Model Flexibility	Any — OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, local, custom endpoints	OpenAI, Anthropic, some BYOK at Pro tier	Any — BYOK, OpenRouter, local
Local / Air-Gapped Mode	Yes — full Ollama support, zero external calls	No — cloud-dependent	Yes — Ollama support
IDE Support	VS Code + JetBrains (native extension)	VS Code fork only — no JetBrains	VS Code only
Inline Tab Autocomplete	Yes — configurable, requires tuning	Best in class — works great out of the box	No — agentic only, no inline completions
Autonomous Agent Mode	Yes — Mission Control + CLI agents	Yes — Composer and Agent mode, well-polished	Best in class — Plan/Act modes, 5M+ installs
CI/CD PR Quality Checks	Yes — unique Mission Control feature	No	No (CLI 2.0 has headless mode for CI)
Setup Time	30–90 minutes for full config	5 minutes	10–20 minutes
Best For	Control-focused devs, privacy-sensitive projects, mixed VS Code / JetBrains teams	Developers who want the best polish and don’t mind the subscription	Autonomous coding tasks, VS Code-only teams

SRG Verdict

Continue earns its spot in the Smart Remote Gigs recommended stack for a specific type of freelance developer: technically confident, privacy-conscious, working across VS Code and JetBrains, and motivated to invest 60–90 minutes of setup time in exchange for never paying a platform subscription again.

If that’s you, the multi-model routing alone — pairing a free local Ollama model for autocomplete with a cloud model for heavy chat — can bring your real monthly AI coding spend below $20 while giving you more model flexibility than Cursor at $20/month flat.

The Mission Control CI/CD agents are a genuine differentiator for freelancers working on client projects with PR-based quality workflows. But I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t name the tradeoffs clearly: if you want something that works immediately without touching a config file, Cursor is still the more polished experience and the $20/month is arguably worth it for the time you save on setup.

And if your primary need is autonomous multi-file agent tasks without inline completions, Cline is the better tool in that specific lane. Continue is the right call when control and cost efficiency matter more than convenience — and for the right freelancer, that’s a strong enough reason to make it your primary coding assistant in 2026.

Continue Reviews

3.6

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Reviews

15014

April 2026

From Reddit

Pros

The open-source model and Apache 2.0 license are genuinely good — I respect what the project is trying to do.

Cons

Since Continue pivoted toward CI/CD and Mission Control, the IDE extension itself feels like it's getting less development attention.

I used Continue as my primary coding assistant for most of 2025 and it was excellent. Somewhere in late 2025 and into 2026 the team's energy clearly shifted toward the Mission Control and CI/CD products, and the IDE extension stopped improving at the same pace. Inline autocomplete has had the same bugs for four months. Chat context handling regressed in one update and was only partially fixed. I moved back to Cursor in March and the polish difference is real. I'll keep watching Continue — the product vision is smart — but right now it doesn't feel like the IDE assistant is the priority anymore.

u/JuniorFreelancer_Nia

April 2026

From Reddit

Pros

The free price is correct and the extension installs without issues.

Cons

As a less-experienced developer I found the configuration requirements overwhelming — I spent more time troubleshooting than coding in my first week.

I tried Continue after seeing it recommended as a free Cursor alternative. The extension installs fine but the moment I needed to configure an API key and choose between chat models and autocomplete models and understand context windows and token limits, I was lost. I watched three YouTube tutorials and still had a broken autocomplete setup on day three. Ended up paying for Copilot because it just worked. Continue is probably great for developers who already understand how AI APIs work — it's not built for people still learning that vocabulary.

Carlos M.

April 2026

From G2

Pros

The configurability is genuinely impressive once you understand it — I've built project-specific assistants that no subscription tool could replicate.

Cons

That same configurability means it takes significant upfront time investment that a new client project doesn't always allow.

I've been using Continue for eight months and I'm good at configuring it now. My current setup has different models for different task types, custom prompt templates for the client frameworks I work in most often, and context rules that pull from specific files automatically. It's genuinely better than Cursor for my workflow. But every new client engagement, I have to decide whether to spend two hours setting up a project-specific Continue config or just open Cursor and start billing. Sometimes the deadline wins and I'm on Cursor.

u/MidLevelDev_Rafi

April 2026

From Reddit

Pros

Free with full features — the zero-subscription core is a meaningful financial advantage for a solo freelancer.

Cons

The API cost unpredictability makes budgeting harder than a flat subscription — I had one month where I hit $90 without realizing it.

I switched to Continue from Copilot to save money and the first three months went well — my API costs were around $15–20 per month using a mix of local and cloud models. Then I had a complex client project in month four where I was doing heavy agent-mode sessions and my Anthropic bill hit $90 without any warning. Flat-rate tools like Cursor and Copilot have real value in their cost predictability. Continue is cheaper on average but you need to actively monitor your usage or it bites you.

u/AgencyLead_Ben

April 2026

From Reddit

Pros

The Team plan's shared API key management is the one feature that makes Continue make sense for a small agency.

Cons

$20/seat/month on top of API costs means the Team plan isn't actually cheaper than Cursor for most teams.

I run a four-person dev agency and looked at Continue Teams as a way to centralize our AI tooling. The API key governance is genuinely useful — developers can use the models without seeing the actual keys, which matters for security. But at $20/seat/month plus our actual API usage on top, we ended up comparable in total cost to just putting everyone on Cursor Pro. If the $10/seat monthly model credits were larger, the math would work more cleanly. As it stands, Continue Teams is a management convenience that costs about the same as alternatives with better polish.

u/JetBrainsDev_Kai

April 2026

From Reddit

Pros

The JetBrains integration actually works well — something I can't say about most AI coding tools that claim JetBrains support but clearly built for VS Code first.

Cons

Agent mode in JetBrains is noticeably less mature than in VS Code — some features lag by a version or two.

I'm a Kotlin developer on IntelliJ and I've tried every AI coding tool that claims JetBrains support. Most of them technically install but the VS Code version is clearly the primary product and the JetBrains plugin is an afterthought. Continue's JetBrains integration feels like it actually gets attention — chat, autocomplete, and inline edits all work as advertised. The agent mode has some rough edges on IntelliJ that don't exist in VS Code, but the team is active and those gaps are closing.

u/OpenSourceDev_Priya

April 2026

From Reddit

Pros

Apache 2.0 license means I can actually audit what the extension does — important when a client asks about my toolchain.

Cons

The Mission Control CI/CD features are promising but the documentation is thin and setup took longer than expected.

I appreciate that Continue is genuinely open source and not just "source available" — I've read parts of the codebase and know what it does and doesn't send externally. For client engagements where I need to answer security questionnaires about my dev toolchain, having a fully auditable extension is a real advantage. The newer Mission Control PR check features are interesting but I'm still ironing out the configuration — the docs don't yet match the product's current state.

Marcus T.

April 2026

From G2

Pros

Works in both VS Code and JetBrains — finally a tool that covers my whole dev environment without me switching IDEs.

Cons

Autocomplete requires more tuning than Copilot to feel natural — the defaults aren't as polished.

I split my time between a TypeScript frontend in VS Code and a Java backend in IntelliJ. Every other tool I evaluated was VS Code only, or required switching to a new IDE entirely. Continue installs as a native extension in both and shares my configuration between them. The model routing works the same way regardless of which editor I'm in. That single feature — cross-IDE parity — justified the setup time before I'd even written a line of code with it.

u/PrivacyDevOps_Sasha

April 2026

From Reddit

Pros

Fully local with Ollama — my client's code never leaves my machine and I can prove it to their security team.

Cons

Local model quality on complex reasoning tasks is a step below Claude Sonnet — acceptable trade-off for me, might not be for everyone.

I contract with a healthcare client that prohibits sending patient-adjacent code to external AI APIs. Continue with a local Ollama setup running Qwen2.5-Coder 32B is the only AI coding tool that passes their security review — I can demonstrate that zero external network calls happen during coding sessions. The code quality is 85–90% of what I'd get from Claude Sonnet and the productivity gain over no AI assistance at all is enormous. Worth every minute of the setup.

u/FreelanceDev_Tomas

April 2026

From Reddit

Pros

Multi-model routing let me cut my AI API spend by more than half without losing quality on billable work.

Cons

The initial YAML config took me a full afternoon to get right — not beginner-friendly.

I set autocomplete to a local Qwen model and chat to Claude Sonnet. My monthly AI spend dropped from $65 to about $18 with zero quality loss on the work I actually bill for. The setup cost me a Saturday afternoon but that was a one-time investment. I've been on Continue for six months now and I haven't touched a Cursor or Copilot subscription since. For a developer who's comfortable in a config file, this is just the smarter financial choice.

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Continue

SRG Bottom Line

What is Continue?

🚀 Key Features for Freelancers

⚖️ Pros & Cons

💰 Pricing Breakdown (Is it worth it?)

⚔️ The Kill-Matrix: Continue vs Competitors

SRG Verdict

Continue Reviews