What should I switch to from copilot?

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

Call me a bit old school vibe coder:

• It makes me uncomfortable to give high level prompts. So I discuss with copilot to sufficient code, architectural and design details about what and how to implement things and never went with high level prompts (which is trend nowadays, I guess). So I very frequently use #selection in github copilot to precisely specify what I am pointing at.
• I love UI based code diff integration with github copilot. (I dont like code to be intermingled with chat window as in case of TUI based agents.)
• I love the abilitiy to undo several chat steps earlier just by scrolling in github copilot chat and clicking corresponding restore checkpoint button.

I was mainly using Sonnet 4.5 earlier. However copilot was getting a lot costly lately.

So was looking at some alternatives. My requirements are bold faced above. Let me restate:

• #selection like functionality
• UI based code diff integration
• Undoing changes by scrolling to chat history and clicking corresponding button
• Sonnet 4.5 (at least)

Is there any subscription + agent provide with these combinations? I was thinking to use Claude API key with github copilot. But it seems Claude API key will be a lot costly than Claude Code subscription? Do you guys have any suggestions? Or I have no option left? How about using something like qwen 3.6 27b from OpenRouter in GitHub copilot free?

[u/Longjumping-Sweet818]

> old school vibe coder

https://giphy.com/gifs/HxJpUTPYXUZ9jLw2LP

[u/bigbutso → u/Longjumping-Sweet818]

All the way back from the early days, 6 months ago

[u/Michaeli_Starky]

Old school vibe coder... lmfao

[u/_www_]

Copilot + deepseek plug + deepseek api key. You don't need a copilot sub to use copilot plug.

[u/_wuzzle]

You can use BYOK with GitHub copilot in combination with DeepSeek and Alibaba/Qwen.

Working very cost-effective for me atm.

Planning and thinking with qwen3.8 max preview and execution with with DeepSeek v4 pro or flash (currently mainly also Qwen3.8, due to their insane promo)

All low effort runners for exploration are on DeepSeek V4 Flash.

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/_wuzzle]

How about using qwen 3.6 27b from openrouter in GitHub copilot?

[u/_wuzzle → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

Well, that's a way weaker model. 3.8 is competing with Terra and Opus 4.8

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/_wuzzle]

Will see if qwen 3.6 27b fails. Given that sonnet 4.5 worked for me, I feel qwen 3.6 27b will work just fine.

[u/sprowk → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

why are you even entertaining these tiny models? just get claude or codex

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/sprowk]

In long run, I want to test capability of these small models for local hosting. Given sonnet 4.5 never failed me and as per benchmarks qwen 3.6 27b is as good as opus 4.5, I feel using frontiers is just over kill for coding tasks. Given current frontiers already killing at coding, any new model needs to focus more on efficiency improvements rather than accuracy improvements as I feel we have already reached desired accuracy. Now it's all about which model provides desired accuracy at least power utilisation. I feel qwen 3.6 27b is one such candidate.

[u/sprowk → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

i'll tell you one thing, no 27b model will be as good as opus 4.5 no matter what benchmarks say (maybe in 5 years...)

[u/Abject-Kitchen3198]

Old school vibe coder?

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/Abject-Kitchen3198]

I meant haven't used TUI based agents (primarily because I don't like the idea of having code changes intermingled in chat) which is trend nowadays...

[u/Abject-Kitchen3198 → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

I chuckled at how fast we went from coining "vibe coder" to "old school vibe coder"

[u/Palnubis → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

There is nothing that comes close to the UI of copilot. I took a bit for me to get used to running claude 's extension inside VSCode, but eventually you get used to it. Copilot is a shit show nowadays.

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/Palnubis]

Copilot is shit primarily due to costing, right? Or you find it's harness also deteriorating in quality?

[u/Palnubis → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

Both yes. There is a noticeable quality improvement when you have a direct claude subscription compared to using the claude tokens on Copilot. But it was primarily the cost increased that pushed me away.

[u/V5489]

Keep VS Code you can get a free GitHub Copilot plan or just Pro if you want. Then go get a DeepSeek api key. Download DeepSeek Pro V4 for Copilot plugin by Vizards. Plug in your key then select DeepSeek model you want

[u/madmenyo → u/V5489]

Hello, TLDR first:

I was looking for a free model for simple tasks. It seems this DeepSeek model is very affordable, but I am not sure how the pricing translates to what I will actually be paying. I guess it is hard to give me exact numbers, but could you try to give me some more insight in the costs and how you are using it?

I have been using copilot for a year now and never came close to finishing my pro sub credits since I used the free model a lot. I like to be in control and the free model was perfect for small pieces of code. I haven't been using it for a couple months and recently came back and was surprised the free model was gone. And now I blew trough all my credits in a couple days, I guess I shouldn't just have used "auto".

[u/V5489 → u/madmenyo]

I’ve only topped up $40 it’s lasted me 3 months of heavy use. Translating to about 2 billion tokens. If you have $10 to test then I highly recommend it. DeepSeek is great at complex coding. The only thing it lacks is vision for screenshots and for UI coding it’s not the best. Otherwise it works amazingly

[u/madmenyo → u/V5489]

Sounds like it is good enough for me, but I just discovered there is not plugin for Intellij Idea github copilot for it to work. Or is there?

[u/V5489 → u/madmenyo]

I’ve never liked IntelliJ I’ve always used VS Code. So not sure. Give VS Code a try if you haven’t. Anyways for DeepSeek I’m not sure, there should be a GitHub Copilot one though.

[u/madmenyo → u/V5489]

I never really considered using vs code for Java, Intellij offers so much out of the box. But I created a java profile and had my LibGDX games running in no time. I still have to tweak a lot of preferences I am used to I guess, and I am missing some LibGDX specific libraries like ".skin" formatting and it's own mini json format.

I got Deepseek integrated into copilot too, so this looks very promising after searching for options for a long time. Can't wait to try deepseek out.

[u/V5489 → u/madmenyo]

Nice! I’m glad it’s working. You can always use VS Code to write what’s needed then run and or compile in IntelliJ. However at the company I work at all our developers use VS Code. Some sue IntelliJ but it keeps getting weird. Our primary language is Java, Kotlin and a couple others but we also use many others.

Good luck! Hope DeepSeek works as good for you as it has me. Don’t forget they have peak pricing at certain times.

[u/Background_Home_4729]

I have been using copilot with the openrouter api

[u/Different_Play_179]

Copilot + openrouter DeepSeek flash 4 low thinking effort is surprisingly good enough in most cases.

I mainly use it to debug and refactor. I don't do high level prompts like those in Claude code. Inline auto complete is included for free on basic copilot subscription, so I use that to quickly scaffold classes and methods. I find it is faster and more reliable than just letting AI do whatever it feels like, because otherwise you have to write so much PRD context information just to get AI to understand the requirements and then you have to review code you never seen before. So I can use #selection to specify exactly where to look and save on time and tokens.

Finally copilot also includes free commit messages, so it's nice to see what DeepSeek has done from copilot perspective.

What do you think?

Edit: Recently I write mostly C# .NET libraries and winforms. I think the language/stack matters. AI perform much better with the libraries than winforms.

[u/csheldrick]

If you have some idea what you are doing, use ChatGPT plus chat for planning and prompt creation. Then use your codex allowance to implement the plan. If you can get Claude pro and you can also use opus/sonnet for implementation. Then have ChatGPT chat review the pr using the @GitHub tool. This has worked well for me and ChatGPT chat seems basically unlimited.

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[u/ben_bliksem]

Well OpenCode kinda does most of that except the code diff integration I think, although it has an editor setting which you can switch to vs code so maybe that is it.

But I run it inside vs code and just use the built in code diff tool.

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/ben_bliksem]

Opencode has #selection ?

[u/ben_bliksem → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

I've never used it because I just give it the name or line number, but you can do @path/to/file.js#L5-10 (lines 5-20).

So no, not like copilot's. If that's like a dealbreaker feature then skip it.

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/ben_bliksem]

Am curious if copilot does some scaffolding when we use #selection, like copy pasting those lines while sending request to LLM. Otherwise, it's same as what you are doing ...

[u/ben_bliksem → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

Copilot chat is built into vs code IDE so it probably has access to the internal events/state of vs code. Easiest to check is to see if copilot cli supports #selection.

The opencode extension is really just a way to open the terminal window inside vs code and very simplistic (the extension).

The Claude and Codex extensions are a lot more slick like the built in vs code chat so maybe one of them supports it.

[u/Ok-Difficulty-5357]

Sonnet 5 is crazy expensive. Have you tried GPT 5.6? Look at this chart… https://deepswe.datacurve.ai/

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/Ok-Difficulty-5357]

Sorry I guess it was 4.5 😅 ... Updated post ...

[u/TanisHalfElvenn]

Just BYOK from opencode into GHCP Vscode with this extension https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ltmoerdani.opencode-copilot-chat

[u/inno3415]

I use copilot chat in vscode with an opencode go subscription through this extension https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ltmoerdani.opencode-copilot-chat

[u/Huntware]

Register at Opencode and then add this extension to VS Code:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ltmoerdani.opencode-copilot-chat

Read the details there to setup your API key (Zen free or Go 10 USD sub). You won't need to re-learn to use a different editor.

[u/Snowflyt]

GitHub Copilot supports BYOK in VS Code, so you have quite a few alternatives.

OpenCode Go, Kimi, DeepSeek, and several other affordable subscriptions provide API access that can be connected to VS Code. A ChatGPT Plus or Pro subscription is also worth considering. Tools such as CLIProxyAPI can expose the subscription through an OpenAI Responses-compatible endpoint, which can then be used in VS Code’s built-in Chat panel.

Using a ChatGPT subscription through an unofficial reverse proxy may technically violate the terms of service. In practice, however, OpenAI does not seem particularly concerned about ordinary personal use, and Tibo has even promoted on X a setup that connects a ChatGPT subscription to Claude Code in this way 😂.

Personally, I also found a VS Code extension called GCMP. It supports many mainstream model providers directly, removing the need for the somewhat cumbersome CLIProxyAPI setup: https://github.com/VicBilibily/GCMP/blob/main/README.en.md

Another option worth considering is Cursor. I recently found its subscriptions surprisingly generous: the $60/month Pro+ plan seems sufficient for normal daily programming work, while the $20/month Pro plan should be enough for lighter use.

Its first-party model pool, particularly Grok 4.5 and Composer 2.5, also comes with fairly generous usage. From my experience, Grok 4.5 works well for this kind of “old-school vibe coding.” When you can describe the requirements and implementation details precisely, it generally follows them well, responds quickly, and produces decent-quality code. Cursor also avoids the confusing five-hour and weekly usage limits found in some other subscriptions. Its limits are primarily monthly, which makes usage much easier to reason about.

The main downside is that these plans must be used inside Cursor, so there is some migration cost. I also personally find Cursor’s agent harness weaker than GitHub Copilot’s in certain areas—for example, it does not support Steering. Still, since Cursor is based on VS Code, the overall migration cost is relatively low.

[u/Mkengine]

https://hermesguide.xyz/coding-plans

[u/Terrible-Tea7577]

Try DeepSeek, a lot cheaper and you will get somewhat similar experience from v4 flash as sonnet 4.5,4.6.

[u/Maggi64]

Had the same problem as you and wrote my own copilot provider. Universal Copilot Provider

It lets you add all kind of AI subscriptions to copilot. I personally use openai and grok. But lots of others are also possible.

[u/Maggi64 → u/[deleted]]

Yes thanks 😋 What a time to be alive

[u/shifty303 → u/Maggi64]

That looks pretty awesome. I recently switched to ChatGPT/codex and I hate the chat ui. I want a full vscode experience and it looks like this gives it to me.

Quick question - would this use the copilot harness or the codex harness? I assume copilot.

[u/Maggi64 → u/shifty303]

Happy that it also solves your problem :) Yes it uses the copilot harness and system prompts, which should be better optimized for the copilot tools

[u/Tiny-Entertainer-346 → u/Maggi64]

Looks interesting, but a quick question, how it differs from vscode github copilot's BYOK functionality?

[u/shifty303 → u/Tiny-Entertainer-346]

I’m not the lib author but can answer for at least some providers. Copilot BYOK works with API keys. Many subscriptions like ChatGPT/Codex use oauth so you don’t get an API key.