Best AI Coding Assistants: Windsurf vs. GitHub Copilot vs. Tabnine

Are you a developer wrestling with the never-ending coding challenges?

It feels like we’re in a constant battle with bugs and deadlines, right?

Well, you’re not alone.

I know I’ve been there too.

But lately, the game has changed a bit.

We’ve got AI coding assistants stepping up to help us get through this thing with less grind.

So, we’re gonna break down the best AI coding assistants like Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, and Tabnine.

These tools aren’t just hype.

They’re built to solve real headaches in software development, boosting productivity and simplifying our coding lives.

Each offers unique features to different developer needs.

Let’s get into it.

GitHub Copilot: Your AI Pair Programming Partner

GitHub Copilot, developed with OpenAI, has become a big name in the AI coding assistants space.

It integrates right into popular IDEs like Visual Studio Code and JetBrains, providing real-time coding support.

It’s like having a coding buddy who knows what you are going to do next before you do.

Key Features of GitHub Copilot

• Intelligent Code Generation: It predicts and suggests full lines or blocks of code by using the context. It supports many programming languages like Python, JavaScript, and Ruby.
• AI Pair Programming: Acts as a virtual pair programmer providing context-aware suggestions. Also automates things like documentation and testing.
• Integration with GitHub: Pulls from the large GitHub repository for the most relevant suggestions.

Limitations of GitHub Copilot

• Subscription-based model. This could turn off some folks, especially if they’re after a free solution.

Tabnine: Focus on Privacy and Security

Tabnine is known for its privacy and security focus.

It processes all codes on your machine. This makes it a good option for highly sensitive projects.

Key Features of Tabnine

• Privacy-Focused Design: Ensures no code leaves your local setup. This is critical for companies that have to follow a lot of compliance requirements.
• Responsive Performance: Fast and context-aware code completions without any impact on your IDE performance.
• Customisation Options: You can personalise the AI assistant to fit your workflow and compliance requirements.

Strengths of Tabnine

• Very effective for project-specific completions and regular tasks. It’s great for developers who want control of their coding environment.

Windsurf: Deep Contextual Analysis

Windsurf is a newer AI coding assistant that’s all about deep contextual analysis.

It’s designed to understand complex codebases and provide smart suggestions.

Key Features of Windsurf

• Context-Aware Analysis: Excels in understanding big, complex codebases. This makes it a solid pick for projects that require nuanced insights.
• Speed and Efficiency: Built for fast code reorganizations, boosting overall development speed.

AI Coding Assistants Comparison Table

To see how these tools stack up, let’s look at a feature comparison:

Feature	GitHub Copilot	Tabnine	Windsurf
Privacy/Security	Cloud-based, data exposure	Local processing, high privacy	Primarily Local Processing (details on data retention need further information)
Code Generation	Context-aware suggestions	Fast completions	Deep Analysis
Customization	Limited	Highly customizable	Moderate: code style and preference adjustment
Integration	Excellent with GitHub Ecosystem	Supports various IDEs	Newer tool; integration details unknown
Pricing Model	Subscription-based	Free and paid versions	Paid subscriptions

In-Depth Comparison: Tabnine vs. GitHub Copilot vs. Windsurf

Alright, let’s get into the meat of it. We’ve covered what each of these AI coding assistants does separately, but now it’s time to see how they stack up against each other.

Tabnine and GitHub Copilot are leading the pack with huge user bases and industry recognition, but Windsurf is shaking things up with its focus on deep contextual analysis.

Let’s dig deeper.

What Is Tabnine?

Tabnine is all about giving you control. It’s an AI code assistant that ensures your software development is smooth, secure, and compliant. It’s geared toward boosting your engineering velocity, the quality of your code, and the happiness of your team through automation. It’s trusted by more than a million developers.

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot is designed to help you write code faster and with less effort. It frees you up to focus on the bigger picture, like problem-solving and team collaboration. It supports a bunch of languages, and it plays nicely with popular IDEs.

What is Windsurf?

Windsurf is the new kid on the block, focusing on providing deep, contextual analysis of codebases. It is all about understanding the complexities of your project for more intelligent code suggestions. It’s geared towards those with larger projects and more nuanced needs.

Both Tabnine and GitHub Copilot offer AI-powered chat and code completions for faster development and offer support use cases such as planning, code generation, explaining, fixing, and creating documentation.

Windsurf focuses less on general code completion and chat, instead emphasizing its strengths in understanding complex code structures.

But Tabnine offers key advantages over GitHub Copilot and Windsurf. Especially for developers, team leads, and legal teams that require a higher degree of control over the critical elements of their AI assistants.

Unlike GitHub Copilot, Tabnine gives you full control. It lets you personalize the AI to your systems, and set privacy and protection trade-offs to fit your needs. Windsurf’s privacy and control features are less well-defined, focusing more on the analytical aspects.

Privacy: Control Over Your Data

• Tabnine offers total control of your data with zero data retention. Your code isn’t stored or shared with third parties, or used to train our models.
• With Tabnine, you can control where it’s deployed. You can choose a secure SaaS or a private on-premises install. Your code always stays within your network.
• Tabnine includes SOC 2 Type 2 compliance for high-security standards.
• GitHub Copilot’s data handling is more cloud-based, with some retention policies in place, but it doesn’t offer the same level of control over data location as Tabnine.
• Windsurf’s approach to data privacy is less detailed in the available resources.

IP Protection: No Worries About Infringement

Tabnine eliminates worries about IP infringement. It lets you use license-compliant models that can be deployed in air-gapped environments. GitHub Copilot offers a filter and IP indemnification to help protect from copyright infringements. Windsurf’s stance on IP protection is not documented.

Personalization: Contextual Recommendations

Tabnine delivers highly personalized recommendations. You control what data it uses from your environment. GitHub Copilot uses local IDE data and organization GitHub repos. Windsurf focuses on understanding complex codebases.

Portability: Flexibility in Use

• You can use Tabnine with any SCM platform. These include GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket.
• You can use the latest LLMs with Tabnine Chat. Admins can choose specific models. They can connect Tabnine to an LLM endpoint inside their network if needed.
• Tabnine integrates with all popular IDEs. This ensures it fits into your workflows.
• GitHub Copilot is integrated tightly with VS Code and JetBrains but has less flexibility than Tabnine with SCM platform.
• Windsurf’s integration capabilities are not as well-defined as Tabnine or GitHub Copilot.

Now, let’s dig into the specifics that differentiate these three heavy hitters.

AI Coding Assistants Data Privacy: Addressing Concerns

Even with AI becoming mainstream for software development. There’s still some skepticism around code assistants. How does the AI assistant handle my data? What data sets are used to train the model? Will my code be used to train the model? These concerns have prevented some companies from embracing AI.

Let’s look at how Tabnine, GitHub Copilot, and Windsurf address these privacy issues.

Data Retention Policies

GitHub Copilot retains your data. If you access it outside of your IDE, your prompts and suggestions are kept for 28 days. This retention applies to both the Business and Enterprise tiers. GitHub Copilot does not use data from these tiers to train their base model.

Tabnine takes a different approach, offering a zero data retention policy. When using Tabnine’s models, they do not store or share your code. They don’t use your code to train their models either.

Windsurf’s policies on data retention are not detailed and the company’s approach to these aspects is less transparent.

Deployment Options

GitHub Copilot is offered as a SaaS product. This requires an active internet connection between your IDE and Azure. This is a deal breaker for some companies with privacy concerns. Especially those in heavily regulated sectors. Such as finance, healthcare, defence, and auto industries. These companies need to deploy in air-gapped environments.

Tabnine offers many deployment options. Customers can use Tabnine as a secure SaaS or as a fully private install (on-premises or on VPC). This keeps your code inside your company network.

Windsurf’s deployment options are not as defined as Tabnine’s which offers SaaS and private deployments, while GitHub Copilot is primarily cloud-based SaaS.

Security and Compliance

A SOC 2 compliance is critical for AI coding assistants. It proves the product is taking proper security steps.

GitHub Copilot is SOC 2 Type 1 compliant but lacks the more critical SOC 2 Type 2 compliance. SOC 2 Type 2 looks at how well the product’s security controls perform over time.

Tabnine offers key compliances like SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and ISO 9001. This ensures the security and privacy of your data.

Windsurf’s security and compliance certifications are not detailed in the information available.

Protection from IP Issues with AI Coding Assistants

The LLM that powers GitHub Copilot is trained on publicly available data. This data could be copyrighted material. If the code suggestion is too similar to copyrighted code, it can cause claims of copyright infringement. GitHub, along with Microsoft and OpenAI, is being sued for reproducing open-source code using AI. GitHub Copilot offers a filter to suppress code suggestions that match public code on GitHub. They offer IP indemnification to protect users. They are also looking at a new code-referencing feature to help users find the right open-source licenses.

Tabnine eliminates these IP infringement concerns. The models are trained on permissively licensed code. This ensures that the recommendations do not match any proprietary code. They are also transparent about the data used to train their models. They offer IP indemnification to enterprise users for peace of mind.

Windsurf’s approach to IP protection is not clear.

Personalization: Context Is Everything

In AI, context is everything. AI coding assistants need to understand the subtle nuances of your development process. This increases the effectiveness of the tool.

GitHub Copilot gains context from the info available in the developer’s IDE. It can also index an organization’s GitHub repos for a global context. Model fine-tuning isn’t currently available.

Tabnine uses locally available data in the developer’s IDE. This includes runtime errors, libraries, other open files, compile errors, non-code sources, current code, reports, history, project data, and other project files. Users can connect Tabnine to their organization code repos for global context. Unlike Copilot, Tabnine is vendor-agnostic and can connect to any Git-based repo. Tabnine also offers model customization. You can fine-tune the model with your code. This is very useful if you are using a bespoke programming language.

Windsurf focuses on a deep understanding of complex codebases.

Ability To Support New Models

GitHub Copilot uses the GPT family of models for its AI Chat. This is the only model option. It prevents users from using new models as they become available. Tabnine offers users 8 different model options for Tabnine Chat. This includes two custom models from Tabnine, and models like Open AI’s GPT-4o, GPT-4.0 Turbo, GPT-3.5 Turbo, Anthropic’s Claude 3 Sonnet, Cohere’s Command R, and Codestral, Mistral’s first-ever code model.

This lets users choose the right model based on their needs. For projects where privacy and legal risks are less important, you can use a performance model. For projects with strict requirements, use a model like Tabnine Protected. Enterprises can control which models power Tabnine Chat. Admins can choose specific models and connect them to an LLM endpoint in their network. Tabnine is committed to adding new models to prevent LLM lock-in and to keep up with innovation.

Windsurf’s approach to models is less clear compared to Tabnine’s broad offering and Copilot’s limitation to the GPT family.

AI Coding Assistants IDE Support

Tabnine offers more robust IDE support compared to Copilot. This means better integration across different development environments. Windsurf’s IDE support is less clear compared to Tabnine or GitHub Copilot. You can learn more about IDEs with this article about why developers prefer project IDX for workflows.

Pricing of AI Coding Assistants

Tabnine is significantly less expensive than Copilot. A look at the table below, confirms the lower monthly costs per user. Windsurf’s pricing model is not readily available.

AI Coding Assistants Pricing Comparison (GitHub Copilot, Tabnine, Windsurf)

AI Assistant	Free Plan	Pro/Individual Plan	Business/Team Plan	Enterprise Plan	Notes
GitHub Copilot	Up to 2,000 completions and 50 chat requests/month	$10/month	$19/user/month	$39/user/month	Free for verified students, teachers, and maintainers of popular open-source projects.
Tabnine	Basic AI code completion, chat	$12/user/month	$24.90/month, or $779 per user, first year, Also $150 for teams of 10	$39/user/month (1-year commitment)	Free trial available for Pro plan. Business plan has team options, and startup discounts.
Windsurf	Not specified	Not specified	Not specified	Not specified

FAQs: Best AI Coding Assistants (Windsurf vs. GitHub Copilot vs. Tabnine)

Which AI coding assistant is best for beginners?

Windsurf and Tabnine are great for beginners! Windsurf simplifies explanations, while Tabnine focuses on suggesting relevant code snippets. GitHub Copilot is powerful but may feel overwhelming for new coders.

How can AI tools help me code faster?

AI tools like GitHub Copilot autocomplete long code blocks, Tabnine suggests context-aware snippets, and Windsurf breaks down complex logic—all saving you time while boosting accuracy.

Do these tools support multiple programming languages?

A: Yes! GitHub Copilot supports most major languages. Tabnine and Windsurf also cover many languages but check their documentation to ensure they support your favourite ones.

Are AI coding assistants worth the cost?

Yes, especially for frequent coders. GitHub Copilot has a subscription model, but it’s robust. Tabnine offers free and paid tiers. Windsurf provides excellent value for cost-conscious users with its budget-friendly pricing.

How do these tools handle privacy concerns?

Tabnine runs locally, protecting your code. GitHub Copilot uses cloud-based processing, which may raise concerns for proprietary projects. Windsurf offers a mix—read their privacy policies to decide what fits your needs.

Final Thoughts on AI Coding Assistants

The table below summarizes the key differences between Tabnine, GitHub Copilot, and Windsurf.

Both tools support code generation, creating documentation, generating tests and more.

But if you need an AI coding assistant with data privacy, control, customization, IP infringement protection, and choice of LLM, then you should choose Tabnine.

GitHub Copilot is well suited for general-purpose tasks, with a wide range of integration capabilities, but the privacy controls are less flexible.

Windsurf offers promise for those dealing with complex codebases but has less detail than the other two tools, with limited user information.

For more options, take a look at this article covering the best coding ai tools in 2024.

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Tabnine: A Leader in the AI Coding Assistants Category

Tabnine is the originator of the AI coding assistants category. They introduced their first AI-based code completion tool for Java in 2018. Tabnine is now the leading AI coding assistant with over a million active users. This enables the company to gather feedback and continuously improve the product.

Tabnine is honoured to be recognized by leading analyst firms.

Gartner Recognition

Tabnine is recognized in Gartner® Critical Capabilities for AI coding assistants. This focused on “14 critical capabilities that align with the five most common Use Cases in Al-augmented development.” Gartner® evaluated 12 vendors, with Tabnine ranked first for:

• Code Generation Use Case
• Code Debugging Use Case
• Code Explanation Use Case

Tabnine is ranked second for:

• Code Modernization Use Case
• Artifact Building and Testing Use Case

Omdia Recognition

Omdia recognized Tabnine in Omdia’s Market Radar for AI-Assisted Software Development.

Everest Group Recognition

Tabnine’s position as a leader in this space was recently reinforced. They were featured as a luminary in Everest Group’s Innovation Watch Assessment for Generative AI Applications in Software Development. Everest Group assessed 14 providers of AI solutions. They segmented them into four categories. Tabnine performed exceptionally well in the entire assessment and is recognized as a Luminary.

Choosing the best AI coding assistants depends on what you need. We have looked at Windsurf vs GitHub Copilot vs Tabnine so you can make an informed decision.

And if you are looking for help beyond AI tools, then you might find this article on what makes a lovable dev and how it works useful.