Quick answer: GitHub Copilot Pro is the cheapest entry point at $10/month; Cursor and Claude Code both start at $20/month; OpenAI Codex comes bundled into ChatGPT's paid plans. Context window sizes and usage caps vary a lot between them, and most working developers end up combining more than one tool rather than picking a single winner.
What does GitHub Copilot cost, and what do you get?
Copilot has a limited free tier, Pro at $10/month with roughly $15 of monthly AI credits, Pro+ at $39/month with about $70 of credits, and Max at $100/month with about $200 of credits. It supports roughly a 128,000–200,000 token context window via workspace indexing.
What does Claude Code cost?
Claude Code is included with a Claude Pro subscription at $20/month. Higher tiers scale usage rather than adding new features: Max at $100/month gives roughly 5x Pro-level usage, and $200/month gives roughly 20x. Claude Code also supports a 1 million token context window, the largest of the major tools.
What does Cursor cost?
Cursor Pro starts at $20/month, Pro+ at $60/month, and Ultra at $200/month, scaling primarily on usage volume and model access. Cursor's effective context window through project indexing runs roughly 200,000–500,000 tokens depending on configuration.
What does OpenAI Codex cost?
Codex isn't sold separately — it's bundled into ChatGPT's paid plans on a token-based credit system. As of mid-2026 it runs on GPT-5.6 variants, with Plus and higher tiers getting access to the larger reasoning modes plus dedicated max/ultra usage settings for heavier agentic work.
What's the cheapest way to actually get started?
For light use — mostly inline autocomplete and occasional chat rather than heavy autonomous agent runs — GitHub Copilot Pro at $10/month is the lowest-cost entry point. Cursor and Claude Code both start at double that, $20/month, but unlock much deeper agentic capability for the extra cost.
What do these different context window sizes actually mean day to day?
A bigger context window lets an agent hold more of your codebase, conversation history, and tool output in view at once before it starts forgetting or needing to summarize. For large, sprawling codebases or long agent sessions, Claude Code's 1M-token window is a real practical advantage over tools capped closer to 128K–500K tokens.
Do professional developers actually just pick one tool and stick with it?
Rarely. The most common real-world setup pairs an editor-integrated tool for daily, in-flow editing — usually Cursor or Copilot — with a terminal-based agent like Claude Code reserved for heavier, multi-file or multi-step tasks that benefit from more autonomy and a bigger context window.
Are the free tiers actually worth using, or just a taste?
They're genuinely useful for light, occasional use or for evaluating a tool before paying, but every major vendor's free tier caps usage well below what a daily working developer needs — treat them as a trial, not a long-term daily-driver plan.
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