I tried 6 Tabnine alternatives to find the best AI assistant in 2025

Stevia Putri

Katelin Teen
Last edited October 2, 2025
Expert Verified

Let me guess: you’re looking for Tabnine alternatives because you’ve hit a wall.
or the suggestions are just… off. I’ve been there. It’s incredibly frustrating when the tool that’s supposed to make your life easier just gets in the way of you actually coding.The world of AI assistants is moving fast. Tabnine was a big deal when it first came out, but the landscape has completely changed. There are now tools that feel smarter, faster, and more like a natural part of your workflow.
In this list, I’m going to walk you through some of the best direct replacements for AI-powered coding that can give you a real productivity boost. But we’re also going to look at a different kind of AI assistant. This one solves a massive, often ignored, productivity killer for engineering teams: the constant "quick question" from support or IT that pulls you out of the zone. By automating that noise, you can get back your most valuable resource: uninterrupted time to code.
What is an AI coding assistant?
Before we dive into the list, let’s get on the same page about what these tools actually do. An AI coding assistant is a plugin for your Integrated Development Environment (IDE), whether that’s VS Code, a JetBrains product, or something else.
Its main job is to watch your code as you type and offer suggestions. This could be as simple as finishing a line of code or as complex as generating an entire function from a comment you wrote. The goal is to speed up the boring, repetitive parts of coding, catch typos, and handle boilerplate so you can save your brainpower for the tough problems.
How I chose the best Tabnine alternatives
To keep things fair, I graded each tool on the same criteria, focusing on what I think really matters to developers and their teams. Here’s my checklist:
-
Accuracy and Context: How well does it understand the entire codebase, not just the file you have open? To give genuinely useful suggestions, an assistant needs to see the big picture.
-
IDE Integration and Feel: Does it blend into your workflow, or is it a clunky add-on that constantly reminds you it’s there? A smooth, intuitive experience is a must.
-
Security and Privacy: Where is your code going? I looked for tools with solid security policies, especially those with self-hosting options and a clear promise not to train their models on your proprietary code.
-
Extra Features: I looked beyond basic autocomplete. Can it write tests for you? Help with refactoring? Does it have a chat interface that’s actually useful for debugging?
-
Pricing and Value: Is the price clear and reasonable? The cost has to be worth the productivity gains, without any nasty surprises on the bill.
Tabnine alternatives: A quick comparison
Before we get into the details, here’s a high-level look at how the Tabnine alternatives I reviewed stack up.
Tool | Best For | Standout Feature | Security Highlight | Pricing Model |
---|---|---|---|---|
eesel AI | Support & IT Teams | Automates support in existing helpdesks | Trains only on your data; EU residency | Subscription |
GitHub Copilot | Individual Devs & GitHub Users | Deep ecosystem integration & chat | Enterprise security controls | Subscription |
Sourcegraph Cody | Enterprise Teams | Whole-codebase context and search | Zero-retention for LLMs | Subscription |
Amazon Q Developer | AWS-centric Development | Native integration with AWS services | AWS IAM integration | Pay-per-user |
JetBrains AI | JetBrains IDE Users | Seamless integration with IDE tools | Supports local & on-prem models | Subscription |
Cursor | AI-native Editing | Building software with an AI-first workflow | Privacy-focused options | Freemium |
6 best Tabnine alternatives for your team in 2025
Alright, here’s my detailed breakdown of the best tools I found. We’ll start with one that attacks a different, but just as important, bottleneck in your company.
1. eesel AI
Let’s be clear upfront: eesel AI does not write code. It’s an AI assistant built to solve a different, but equally frustrating, productivity problem: automating customer support and internal helpdesks.
So, why is it on this list? Because while your engineers use AI to write code faster, your support and IT teams can use eesel AI to resolve up to 70% of their tickets automatically. This is huge. It means fewer escalations interrupting your developers, which frees them up to actually build your product. Think of it as a defensive tool for your engineering team’s focus.
What it does well:
-
Go live in minutes, not months: You can set up eesel AI entirely on your own without talking to a salesperson or sitting through a mandatory demo. It has one-click integrations for helpdesks like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Intercom, so you can get started without needing a developer to help.
-
Connects all your knowledge: eesel AI learns from all the places your company knowledge is scattered, old support tickets, your Confluence wiki, random Google Docs, and even public Slack channels. It pieces it all together to give accurate answers based on your company’s actual information.
A screenshot of the eesel AI platform showing how a lead generation agent connects to multiple business applications to build its knowledge base, a key feature for Tabnine alternatives focused on support.
- Test before you launch: Before you turn it on for your customers, you can run it in a simulation mode on thousands of your past tickets. This gives you a clear forecast of your automation rate and shows you exactly how it will perform, so you can roll it out without any risks.
A screenshot of a simulation mode for an AI lead generation agent, showing predicted performance and cost savings based on historical data. This is a useful feature for those considering Tabnine alternatives.
Pros:
-
It’s ridiculously easy to set up yourself.
-
It connects to your existing tools, so you don’t have to migrate any of your documentation.
-
The pricing is straightforward and predictable, with no weird per-resolution fees that penalize you for being successful.
Cons:
-
It’s not a tool for writing code.
-
It’s designed specifically for support, IT service management, and internal helpdesks.
Pricing:
-
Team Plan: Starts at $299/month.
-
Business Plan: Starts at $799/month, which adds training on past tickets and more advanced AI actions.
2. GitHub Copilot
You’ve almost certainly heard of this one. As one of the most popular Tabnine alternatives, GitHub Copilot is a beast, especially if your whole world is already inside the GitHub ecosystem. It runs on OpenAI’s models and delivers some of the best code completion out there, plus a chat interface that’s surprisingly good for brainstorming or debugging.
Pros:
-
The quality of its code suggestions is top-notch.
-
It’s a great way to get up to speed quickly in a new language or framework.
-
Copilot Chat is genuinely helpful for asking high-level architectural questions or getting unstuck on a bug.
Cons:
-
You have to be careful, as it can sometimes suggest code with security holes or from sources with tricky licenses.
-
For companies working on highly sensitive codebases, the privacy implications can be a dealbreaker.
Pricing:
It’s free for verified students and maintainers of popular open-source projects. For everyone else, plans start at $10/month for individuals and $19/user/month for businesses.
3. Sourcegraph Cody
Cody is aimed squarely at big companies. Its superpower is using Sourcegraph’s code search engine to understand the context of your entire organization’s code. If you’re working in a giant monorepo or across dozens of microservices, this is a massive advantage and makes Cody’s suggestions feel incredibly relevant.
Pros:
-
It’s the best I’ve seen at understanding context across multiple repositories.
-
It has strong security and privacy features, including a zero-retention policy for enterprise customers, which means they don’t store your code.
-
It’s a fantastic tool for getting new developers productive on a complex project.
Cons:
-
It can feel a little slower than other tools, likely because it’s doing so much work to gather context in the background.
-
It’s a bit more expensive than some of the other options.
Pricing:
The Pro plan is $9/user/month, and the Enterprise plan is $19/user/month.
4. Amazon Q Developer
If your team builds on Amazon Web Services, then Amazon Q is a no-brainer. It’s an AI coding assistant that has deep, native knowledge of AWS services, APIs, and best practices. It’s built to help developers write, debug, and deploy cloud-native code way more efficiently.
Pros:
-
It offers the best support you can find for the AWS SDKs, Lambda, S3, and other services.
-
It plugs directly into AWS IAM for enterprise-level security and access control.
-
It can help you figure out tricky AWS-specific problems, like why an IAM policy isn’t working as expected.
Cons:
-
Its usefulness drops off a cliff for any project that isn’t heavily tied to the AWS ecosystem.
-
Its suggestions for general-purpose code can be a bit hit-or-miss.
Pricing:
Amazon Q Developer has a free tier, and the Pro plan costs $19/user/month.
5. JetBrains AI Assistant
If you and your team live inside JetBrains IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, or WebStorm, this assistant gives you the smoothest experience possible. It’s built right into the IDE and hooks into the powerful code analysis and refactoring engines you already use, so it feels like a natural extension of your tools.
Pros:
-
The integration with the JetBrains ecosystem is practically flawless.
-
It can generate commit messages, create unit tests, and explain confusing chunks of code right in your editor.
-
It supports local and on-premise models, which is a huge win for privacy and security.
Cons:
-
It’s a much harder sell if you’re not already paying for a JetBrains IDE.
-
The chat feature can sometimes lose track of the conversation’s context.
Pricing:
It’s included in the JetBrains All Products Pack subscription or can be purchased separately starting at €10.00/month.
6. Cursor
Cursor is the odd one out here. It’s an "AI-first" code editor, basically a version of VS Code that has been rebuilt from the ground up to work with AI. It lets you edit code by just telling it what to do in plain English, reference other files with "@" symbols, and apply changes across your entire project at once.
Pros:
-
The interface is incredibly fast and intuitive for AI-driven development.
-
It’s amazing for big, complex refactors or making a change that touches dozens of files.
-
The "Agent Mode" can attempt to tackle larger tasks on its own, like building a new feature from a simple prompt.
Cons:
-
It’s a completely separate code editor, which can be a non-starter for teams that have a standardized dev environment.
-
It can sometimes feel a bit sluggish or buggy on very large projects.
Pricing:
There’s a basic free plan. The Pro plan starts at $20/month, and the Business plan is $40/user/month.
This video explores the future of coding by comparing different Tabnine alternatives to help you decide which AI coding tool is best for your needs.
Choosing the right Tabnine alternatives for your business
When you’re picking an AI tool for your company, autocomplete is just the beginning. For a tool to provide real value, it has to do more than just write a few lines of code.
-
Customization and Control: Look for a platform that puts you in the driver’s seat. Can you define the AI’s personality and the exact actions it’s allowed to take? With a tool like eesel AI, you can build custom workflows and decide precisely which types of tickets get automated and which get sent to a human.
-
Onboarding and Deployment: How long until you actually see results? Many AI tools are stuck behind long sales calls and complicated setups that require developer time. A self-serve platform lets you sign up and get going in minutes, not months.
-
Transparent Pricing: Be careful with pricing models that charge you per resolution or interaction. They create unpredictable bills and punish you for using the tool more. Look for flat, transparent subscription plans so your costs stay predictable as you scale.
The right Tabnine alternatives for the right job
The market for AI assistants isn’t one-size-fits-all anymore. While there are some fantastic Tabnine alternatives like GitHub Copilot and Sourcegraph Cody to make your developers faster, that only solves part of the productivity puzzle.
The real takeaway here is to use the right tool for the right job. For your developers, that means a powerful coding assistant that lives in their IDE. For your support and IT teams, it means an intelligent automation platform that can resolve issues on its own.
By giving your support team a tool like eesel AI, you don’t just make them more efficient. You give your engineers their most valuable resource back: uninterrupted time to build.
Ready to stop context-switching and start building? See how much support you can automate with eesel AI.
Frequently asked questions
Many developers seek Tabnine alternatives due to issues like high memory usage or inaccurate code suggestions. The AI assistant landscape has rapidly evolved, offering smarter, faster tools that integrate more seamlessly into modern workflows and provide better productivity.
When evaluating Tabnine alternatives, focus on accuracy and context understanding across your codebase, seamless IDE integration, robust security and privacy policies, valuable extra features like chat or test generation, and clear, reasonable pricing. These criteria ensure the tool genuinely boosts productivity.
Yes, several Tabnine alternatives prioritize security. Sourcegraph Cody, for example, offers a zero-retention policy for enterprise customers, while JetBrains AI and Amazon Q provide options for local models or strong IAM integration respectively, ensuring your proprietary code remains protected.
Absolutely. JetBrains AI is designed for seamless integration within JetBrains IDEs, and Amazon Q Developer is ideal for teams building heavily on AWS services. Cursor, on the other hand, provides an AI-first editing experience as a standalone VS Code alternative.
Pricing for Tabnine alternatives varies, often starting from around $10-20/user/month for individual or Pro plans, with enterprise tiers being higher. Some offer free tiers for students or open-source maintainers, while eesel AI (for support automation) uses subscription plans starting from $299/month.
eesel AI is included as a strategic "alternative" because it solves a related productivity bottleneck for engineers by automating support and IT helpdesks. By reducing interruptions from these internal "quick questions," it frees up developers’ valuable time to focus on coding, indirectly boosting their efficiency.
Beyond basic autocomplete, leading Tabnine alternatives offer functionalities like generating entire functions from comments, writing unit tests, assisting with refactoring across large codebases, debugging support via chat interfaces, and even generating commit messages. Some, like Cursor, enable an "AI-first" workflow for complex tasks.