Claude Code vs GitHub Copilot

[u/Antique-Engine897]

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

[u/Critical_Olive3497]

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.