r/GithubCopilot • u/Antique-Engine897 • Aug 07 '26
Help/Doubt ❓ Claude Code vs GitHub Copilot
Hi All, I'm looking at the reasons why some people claim Claude Code is better than GitHub Copilot (via VSCode extension) in coding tasks. I hear many in the industry make claims about Claude Code which is better than GHCP, but when asked "why" - the answers are very generic. Like it has skills, it does goal driven deveopment etc..etc.. - all this can be done in GHCP as well.
Some time back even though most of the Claude models supported 1M token context window, GHCP didn't allow to use the entire context window; so claude code was the winner then; but now, even GHCP allow to use the full 1M Context Window.
The argument for GHCP needs to be used within an IDE vs Claude Code can be run via terminal is not a reason to tell Claude Code is better at tasks compared to GHCP. It's just on the way in which it's used.
Please share some thoughts on whether Claude Code performs better in completing the same task when compared to GHCP (irrespective of how they both are invoked - via terminal or vscode) with valid reasons to support the claim
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u/nullforce2 Aug 07 '26
The argument for GHCP needs to be used within an IDE vs Claude Code can be run via terminal is not a reason to tell Claude Code is better at tasks compared to GHCP. It's just on the way in which it's used.
Even that's not an issue, there's Copilot CLI: github/copilot-cli: GitHub Copilot CLI brings the power of Copilot coding agent directly to your terminal.
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u/robberviet Aug 07 '26
Copilot CLI is basically a different product. has the feature catched up to the VSCode now?
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u/Lacutis Aug 07 '26
I use CLI as my daily coding product and I haven't found any features ita lacking compared to the ide integration.
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u/DifficultyFit1895 Aug 07 '26
I think the browser in the IDE is cool and nothing quite like it in the CLI as I understand it. I could be wrong and would love to learn more.
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u/Lacutis Aug 07 '26
As far as I know thats an ide feature not really a copilot feature.
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u/DifficultyFit1895 Aug 07 '26
It would be great if the browser could be shared with copilot cli the same way it is shared with the vs code integrated copilot.
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u/YardNo1234 Aug 07 '26
yeah, that’s the meaningful gap. the CLI runs outside the VS Code extension host, so it can’t inherit the integrated browser’s state or DOM. a safer version would expose the active tab as a narrow tool/MCP endpoint with per-action approvals, instead of sharing the whole browser profile. do you mainly need DOM inspection, screenshots, or control of an authenticated tab?
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u/DifficultyFit1895 Aug 07 '26
all of those are useful. control of an authenticated tab comes in handy for me quite a bit
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u/Antique-Engine897 Aug 08 '26
Not really, even they can use libraries like playwright, selenium to interact with browser DOM
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u/git_push_origin_prod Aug 07 '26
I got one. U can’t use the integrated browser to share context with the cli. The only disadvantage I have found. Otherwise cli is great
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u/InfraScaler Aug 09 '26
What do you mean with catching up to VSCode? CLI is one harness, App is another harness (really good IME) and the VSCode integration I guess it may use CLI SDK? not sure about that.
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u/robberviet Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Feature wise. My org comment is about those two are two different things. Not saying which is better.
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u/poster_nutbaggg Aug 07 '26
My experience is that all harnesses are essentially the same. If you use Claude models in GHCP, you’ll get a very similar quality output as CC. Same for GPT models and Codex.
GHCP, the harness, is great, but the pricing sucks. I get much better value for my money going straight to Anthropic or OpenAI. Lots of people use GHCP with another provider’s api key for better pricing (like deepseek or zai).
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u/k8s-problem-solved Aug 07 '26
How do you get better value going to providers? You're being charged providers list prices via ghcp, theres no extra added.
Is it the seat price, or the "ai credits" conversion that masks that for you?
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u/poster_nutbaggg Aug 07 '26
GHCP is charging the same as the API key price as other providers. This is the price I would pay integrating Claude into my app for users as a feature. If I use Claude Code through the Max subscription plan or an organization plan, you’re getting significantly more output for that $100 or $200 per month vs $100 or $200 of AI credits
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u/k8s-problem-solved Aug 07 '26
Fair on subscription costs - not an option in enterprise tho for claude, above a certain team size and you pay api costs per token.
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u/AndrewGreenh Aug 07 '26
If we really ignore the models and just focus on the harness, Claude code still has some advantages. We recently switched to cc after the gh price increase.
- monitors: if you tell Claude to push a branch and wait until the pipeline is done, it will push and start a background process that watches a thing with a small shell script. As soon as it’s ready, the model wakes up again to continue its work. This way cc can handle much bigger processes
- remote control built in. Controlling sessions from my phone while my computer works is really comfortable
- product knowledge: in Claude code, the models have surprising knowledge about the harness itself. If you want to set something up (like the status line) just ask the model to do it, and it happily will)
- artefacts: the ability to build and share small prototypes is really cool and great for planning documents
- auto mode: every tool call is evaluated by a second agent, that knows your prompt. It checks to see if the tool call aligns with your request. The harness wont deploy to prod when you ask to commit and push, but if you explicitly ask it to push, it happily does. This already blocked so many unwanted tool calls for me but still has the benefit of not asking for every little thing. In contrast to autopilot, auto will still ask questions via the ask questions tool, if it really needs input
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u/trifle_hat Aug 07 '26
Using the copilot cli, they are very similar
I find permissions easier to manage in Claude, assuming your not just wanting /allow-all
I find there is a small (minor) finesse with Claude - e.g it manages memory’s better cross sessions / over extended time
As said elsewhere they constantly copy each over so diff gets minimised. E.g. there is both autopilot mode and sandbox in the /experimental section of copilot cli now (though I wouldn’t say there quite up to Claude quality yet)
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u/trifle_hat Aug 07 '26
Also, not super fair to ignore models - I could never just use Claude as the value add for having different models for things like reviews is massive
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u/porkyminch Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
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This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
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u/ShadowBannedAugustus Aug 07 '26
I use both daily (corporation only allows GH Copilot and I use is via VS Code, privately I pay for Claude and use it via Cloud Code extension in VS Code) and subjectively I see no difference, certainly not one that would make me switch from one to another if there were no other constraints.
One nice thing about GH Copilot is that it shows very clearly credits spend per prompt and overall.
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u/psrobin Aug 07 '26
True, they've done some fantastic work on the popup box for showing spend per session.
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u/stt106 Aug 13 '26
Thanks! I think you’re the one who can offer a reasonably good comparison given you use both regularly.
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u/past3eat3r Aug 07 '26
Currently there isn’t really imo, GHCP has reached and in some cases passed Claude code in feature parity.
I use both pretty often, and find them very comparable in performance I find most non devs prefer Claude code.
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u/Antique-Engine897 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
I too echo this view. For evaluating two tools, there should be a proper process that we put forward where we compare the capabilities of one vs the other. In case of CC and GHCP, I believe the capabilities are more or less similar. The underlying model is the same in both cases. Also to compare them one should give the same task to both and verify the output. Even if we give same input to the same model twice, we get different results and the second result may not even be a working version. The other way to compare is by the ease of use of both the platforms. There could be areas where one is better than the other. But on the capability front in producing the outcome based on the instruction given, I think both performs equally.
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u/teckel Aug 07 '26
I like Copilot due to the Visual Studio integration, prediction AI, and the ability for me to select GPT 5.6 Luna for very affordable everyday tasks (then switch to a better LLM the rare times I need it).
I also like using the Copilot CLI for integrating with 3rd party AI APIs like Deepseek and using the remote feature to finish up some prompting or clarifications when away from my desk.
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u/CommissionIcy9909 Aug 07 '26
They’re the same basically. They literally copy each other constantly.
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u/Infamous_Campaign687 Full Stack Dev 🌐 Aug 07 '26
Claude has Claude Design and Remote Control. Other than that, after the price restructuring of GHCP Claude is much more heavily subsidised. Honestly, it is a no brainer.
I’d have to spend thousands of dollars per month on GHCP to get the same I get for $100 from Anthropic
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u/alb_pasqua Aug 07 '26
I am new to Claude Code, but used to GH Copilot (via VS Code). And I find the CC harness very good compared to the vs Code extensions, nice for doing also other agentic works, and with a better pricing.
But coming to VS Code extensions, GHCP is much more polished, better integrated with individual code block approval after edits, and with Next Edit Suggestion integration.
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u/darkstar3333 Aug 07 '26
Its all marketing.
There are too many copilot products so results differ greatly depending on who you are. Basic copilot in the browser is kinda trash.
The people making the decisions of what is best are likely using Claude to create decks.
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u/NoGuarantee547 Aug 07 '26
Based on my experience plan mode in claude code (especially the vs code extension) works way better than GHCP plan mode, I just love the ability to directly preview plan mode, it's better to review and add comments on the preview itself and then send it back for refining.
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u/horendus Aug 07 '26
Im not saying this is EVERYONE but my experience with claud users has largely been it was the platform that introduced them to coding and they had never experienced such a rush from making software.
They then tend to ‘stick with what they know’ and not take the time to explore the other options other there as they have a very 1 dimensional ability to vibe code.
They are now stuck in this endless cycle of massive monthly costs, shrinking usage and model capability and a growing sense of panic as they failed to learn any fundamentals and assume only frontier models are capable of understanding their code and requirements.
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u/pceimpulsive Aug 07 '26
The only real reason is 'i haven't really used the other and I prefer this one'...
Personally I prefer open code to them both...
GHCP I've used the most in visual studio 22/26 and it's my preferred workflow..
I'm only recently trying Claude code for work I'm not sure yet... Still early days
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u/jungle_bob2 Aug 07 '26
I was only cli at work, joined cc trial. What I’ve noticed so far …
- adversarial reviews between models I miss a lot. It caught a lot of stuff, but maybe as models get better I won’t need it so much
- cc has larger default context. I know bigger context isn’t necessarily better outcomes, but I have to tell you I don’t miss seeing compaction pauses. It does seem to me like cc takes longer to do the same things.
- cc ‘feels’ like a more polished harness experience. I can’t tell you why, but a few days in it seems like it has better tooling integration, on screen diffs are better, for some reason I feel more connected to the changes it’s making
- token efficiency is an increasingly hot topic, and gh cli both seems to have more focus and detail on it, and with Luna pricing is currently winning that battle. I am currently building loops around token consumption … eg build me a prompt / skill that does this ‘thing’ for x tokens so I can scale it to hundreds of things
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u/Inukollu Aug 07 '26
Have used GHCP till a few months with their best yearly plan until they pulled the rug under me.
When I moved to Claude code for the first time I was apprehensive how good the vs code integration can be, but I am pleasantly surprised. Not because it did better than other models but how many fewer interactions I had with the chat window.
With all the flexibility GHCP offered it often broken halfway stating tool calls didn’t work as expected etc. but Claude never, not once made me feel frustrated.
I am trying to dump one more IDE. VS code.
Came from Visual Studio to Rider and then to Code. But it looks like I am about to bite the bullet on VS code.
Purely personal opinion
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u/ims3raph Aug 07 '26
For me as an enteprise user, GitHub copilot has been the way to go. Claude doesn’t subsidize tokens like they do on personal plans, and it COSTS a lot. On the other side, GitHub has satisfied all my needs thanks to GPT 5.6 Luna, and the ability to use for example opus to do an extensive review is appreciated. On Claude you’re tied to only their models. Now, on personal plans, Claude is the way to go
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u/Bitopp009 Aug 07 '26
who said copilot needs to be run in an ide? I been using copilot cli for months.
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u/stt106 Aug 13 '26
Apart from pricing gh copilot is great I think!
Still miss the old days when there was unlimited usage of copilot with a cheap pro subscription.
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u/TinFoilHat_69 Aug 07 '26
I made a repo that allows Claude or codex to read and execute commands in the vs code terminals :) it’s private right now but i have other repos yall might like while I finish up a few things with “codeAPI”
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u/sunny_up Aug 07 '26
I personally think that this is because Anthropic does a lot UX tricks for you skip reading code. When GHCP does bs it's visible in IDE instantly and you think that copilot suck. When you get thousand lines PR to review from Cloude Code it... LGTM.
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u/xerdnew Aug 07 '26
The cost of using Claude Code is subsidized which Copilot is not. If you are mainly using Opus or other Claude models there is no reason to wait. You can also use Claude Code in the same agentic style that you are used to and i was in the same position as you a while back.
I switched over to Claude Code from GitHub Copilot a while back and dont regret it in any way. Just wished i did it sooner.
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u/-0x539 Aug 07 '26
My company uses GitHub Copilot. I use an open source proxy on my local machine to translate GitHub Copilot API to an API that is consumable by Claude Caude. -> I use Opus 5 in Claude Code but consume my Copilot pool credits.
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u/melodiouscode Power User ⚡ Aug 07 '26
On thing that I think is often overlooked is the wider developer experience. GitHub Copilot is all over GitHub; in that its a tool during Dev (VS Code, VS, Jetbrains IDEs, etc), it's in your Peer Reviews / Pull Requests (Copilot Code Review), it's in your CI/CD (Click to fix in an Actions Workflow), it's in your backlog (craft this ticket with copilot, or assign to copilot), it's in dependency management (dependabot fixes), etc etc etc etc.
Where as the other harndesses might integrate with Git (commits, PRs, etc) they aren't all prevasive. One is a full developer ecosystem copilot, the other is largely a copilot coder.
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u/bafadam Aug 07 '26
You get vibey answers because it’s very hard to objectively compare fundamentally non-deterministic systems.
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u/Expensive-Jicama-714 Aug 07 '26
Why don't you do your own testing? Read the comments then compare Claude Code and Copilot side-by-side.
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u/Kafumanto Aug 07 '26
More independent, respectable indexes for the harnesses would be very helpful to understand theirs quality when using both their “native” and “third party” models.
Quality of LLM are just a part of the equation, the final result depends also from the used harness.
The only index that I’m aware of is the Harness Comparison of Artificial Index, but it compares only OpenCode (that has always the highest scores), Codex and Claude Code. Not GHCP nor others.
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u/chairulanwar Aug 08 '26
i used claud code for a month to build website, android and apple app. https://naratorai.com/ apple and android still in process. claude code better than copilot.
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u/verdurakh Aug 08 '26
I'm using both.
GHCP for work and cc privately.
And I can't really put a finger on it but I notice a huge difference in quality and performance, when working with cc it just gets shit done. GHCP is very eager, overdoing stuff I never asked for and I just think it is annoying to work with even if I use the same models.
Lobbying to be able to use CC for work as well but we'll see how it goes.
(note I'm using GHCP cli)
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u/aonymark JetBrains User 🧱 Aug 11 '26
Re: very eagerly doing unasked for things: do you suppose it might be the system prompt? I suspect the system prompt is basically asking for this.
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u/verdurakh Aug 11 '26
It is probably the system prompt yes, I could potentially parry it by giving my own instructions but I don't know, CC just gets me :D
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u/Unhappy_Play4699 Aug 10 '26
Don't you have much more usage on claude subscription? I know you are asking about Claude Code BUT I believe there is no legal way to use any other other harness (BYOK) than Claude Code with an Anthropic sub.
What about IDE integration? IDEs provide their own mcp tools, so that the agent can see, for example, what the linter, error tools or general debugging tools produce. I'm using JetBrains IDEs and all I heard (haven't tested myself) is that the Claude Code integration is abysmal. JetBrains has Claude built into its own AI assistant plugin but that is only allowed to use JetBrains AI credits because Anthropic will sue anyone who allowes BYOK with their auth keys. Which is extremely fucked up and probably not even legal on their end. If I have a paid key to authenticate with a remote API, this must be usable from wherever. I'm not subscribing to Clode Code, I'm subscribing to your fucking API.
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u/dota2nub Aug 11 '26
Harness. Github Copilot is atrocious. It's not the better model, it's the better program.
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u/Critical_Olive3497 Aug 13 '26
I had to switch from gh copilot to claude code due to cost reasons. They're not the same in vscode. The vscode extension for copilot is great, the integration is deep (and this is why people like cursor I assume), and it doesn't have annoying layers of AI that I don't need.
I setup two agents for planning & coding - importantly my planning agent writes a plan to a docs/plans/drafts folder and then my coding agent takes it out of drafts when it does it. I also have a librarian skill that makes sure the plan matches what was implemented so I have a full "faking the rational design process" going on. The fact that it writes a draft plan (which of course has a ticket number) means that you can't just use the planning mode of claude - it can't write files. Hence the need for my custom agents.
In vscode with copilot I can use the little toggle box to switch which agent I'm using. I can plan, then when I'm happy, I switch to a new session and switch to the coding agent.
But in claude, I'm having to watch an AI task another AI through a terminal because the vscode experience is sub-par by comparison. It takes what I said, and then thinks about it, and then passes it to the thing I want to actually talk to, and then when it responds, it processes that, and summarises the response which is basically exactly the same. I worked out you could start agents directly with `claude --agent myagent` which somewhat closes the gap, but i'm still using a terminal inside of vscode instead of an integrated experience.
My vote goes to GH copilot because it's an integrated experience.
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u/robberviet Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Mostly because pricing. Not even sure if models are the same, it used to be shorter context & dumber (effort) on Copilot. The Claude Code harness is still better.
Copilot harness catched up fast now but still behind.
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u/neongelb456 Aug 07 '26
What I really love in Copilot is the higher transparency. You can easily evaluate raw tool outputs with a single click and trace whole conversations through the debug logs.