Overview
Continue — Best for teams that want customizable AI coding infrastructure.
Continue helps teams build configurable AI coding assistants with support for local or hosted models, custom context providers, and editor integrations.
Open-source editor extensions
Custom model provider support
Context providers for code and docs
Autocomplete and chat workflows
Features & capabilities
Everything it does, in plain English.
FeatureOpen-source editor extensionsIncluded
FeatureCustom model provider supportIncluded
FeatureContext providers for code and docsIncluded
FeatureAutocomplete and chat workflowsIncluded
PlatformsVS Code · JetBrains
The honest take
Where it shines, where it stumbles.
✓ Pros
- ✓Highly configurable
- ✓Supports local models
- ✓Good for internal developer platforms
! Watch-outs
- !Setup takes more work than hosted assistants
- !Requires model/provider choices
Who it's for
Where Continue pays for itself fast.
— Use case
Use local LLMs in the editor
— Use case
Standardize AI coding setup for a team
— Use case
Create custom context sources
— Use case
Keep sensitive code in controlled environments
Community reviews
Share your take on Continue
Sign in to leave a verified review.
E
★★★★★
Today
Solid free alternative to paid tools
For developers who don't want to spend $20/month on Cursor, Continue is the answer. It's not as polished but it's genuinely capable. The community is active and improvements ship fast. Multi-line autocomplete impresses me every week.
O
★★★★★
Today
Best integration with custom models
I work on fine-tuned models and Continue makes testing them in a real IDE trivial. Connect to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint and you're up in 2 minutes. Invaluable for evaluating custom models in real coding tasks.
H
★★★★★
Today
Perfect for teaching AI-assisted coding
I use Continue in my advanced CS courses to teach students about AI-assisted development. The transparency of the config system and the ability to see exactly what prompt is sent makes it educational.
F
★★★★★
Today
Self-hostable and private by default
Our company has strict policies about sending code to external APIs. Continue with Ollama running locally is the only AI coding tool our security team approved. The code stays on our machines.
N
★★★★★
Today
Finally, AI coding for JetBrains users
After months of feeling left out (most good AI tools are VS Code only), Continue works perfectly in IntelliJ. The autocomplete is fast, the chat is contextual, and it supports remote models without proxy setup.
T
★★★★★
Today
The Copilot for people who want control
Continue is everything GitHub Copilot should be: open source, configurable, works with any model. I run it with a local Ollama model for private code and Claude for complex tasks. One config file manages everything.
A
★★★★★
19 days ago
Most customizable AI coding extension
The context provider system is what sets Continue apart. You can pull in documentation, database schemas, Jira tickets, whatever you need. Building a custom context provider for our internal SDK docs took an afternoon and now every engineer on the team has that context available. No other tool gives you this level of control.
H
★★★★★
1 months ago
Perfect for teams that need data control
We handle financial data that can never leave our network. Continue with a locally hosted Ollama setup was the only option that met our compliance requirements. The context providers let us connect internal docs and code search. Setup took a day, and now our 30-person engineering team has a capable AI assistant without any data leaving the building.
B
★★★★★
1 months ago
Solid for regulated environments
We needed an AI coding tool that could be audited, air-gapped if necessary, and configured centrally. Continue checks all those boxes. The autocomplete quality with Code Llama is decent — not Copilot-level but acceptable. For our use case, control and compliance matter more than raw quality, and Continue delivers on both.
Alternatives
Similar tools worth comparing.
Lovable
Create full-stack web applications from natural language descriptions using AI.
Cursor AI
Code editor built for AI-assisted development with Cmd+K, chat, and codebase-aware AI.
Llama by Meta
Meta's open-source LLM family powering thousands of AI applications
Mistral AI
High-performance open-weight LLMs from a European AI lab
Windsurf IDE
AI-native IDE with agentic Cascade feature that understands and acts on your entire codebase.
DeepSeek
Open-source AI models from DeepSeek with remarkable reasoning and coding at competitive cost.