Agentfly vs GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is an AI assistant you add to an editor you already use, with a free tier that has monthly limits and paid plans above it. Agentfly is the editor itself, with AI agents built in on your own provider key and no plan to buy - and it credits you a share of its advertising revenue. The first is the smaller change; the second is the one that also changes who pays whom.
An assistant, or an editor
Copilot's great strength is that it goes where you already are. It does not ask you to move, and for most people that is the right-sized change.
Agentfly asks you to move, and is only worth it if you want what comes with the move: the AI on your own key with no plan limits, agents that work in parallel with proof of what they ran, git history and terminals configured together, and an editor that pays you rather than charging you.
Limits, and who sets them
A plan's allowance is set by the vendor and changes when the vendor decides. With your own key the only limits are your provider account's, and you can raise them yourself. Heavy agent use on a plan tends to meet its ceiling; heavy use on your own key meets only your budget, which you can see request by request.
Where Copilot is genuinely ahead
Reach and integration. It runs in more editors than any other assistant, and its coding agent lives inside GitHub itself - an issue goes in, a pull request comes out. If that loop is how your team works, nothing in an editor replaces it.
Agentfly compared with GitHub Copilot
| GitHub Copilot | Agentfly | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An AI assistant for VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs and other editors. | A complete desktop editor with the AI built in. |
| Price | A free tier with monthly limits, and paid individual and business plans above it. | Free. No subscription and no paid tier. |
| AI billing | Included in the plan, with limits that depend on the plan. | Your own provider key at the provider's own rates. No markup, no cap of Agentfly's. |
| Model choice | The models GitHub offers on your plan. | Four providers or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including a model on your own machine. |
| Agents | Agent mode in the editor, and a coding agent that works on GitHub issues and opens pull requests. | Agents that edit across files and run your tests; several at once on a board, with proof of work, and Race mode to compare models. |
| Keeping your editor | Yes - that is the point of it. | No. Moving editors is a real cost, and it belongs on this side of the table. |
| Earnings | None. | About $0.001 per impression, credited on an append-only ledger. |
Common questions
- Is there a free alternative to GitHub Copilot?
- Copilot has its own limited free tier. Agentfly is a different kind of free: a complete editor with AI agents built in, where you bring your own API key and pay the provider directly, with no plan limits of Agentfly's own - and the editor credits you a share of its ad revenue.
- Can I use GitHub Copilot inside Agentfly?
- Agentfly's AI runs on your own provider keys rather than through a Copilot subscription. You can keep Copilot in the editors you already use and try Agentfly alongside them; the two do not conflict.
- Does Agentfly work with any model, like Copilot's model picker?
- Agentfly connects directly to four providers and to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including a model running on your own machine. You choose the model per chat or per agent, and Race mode can give one task to two or three models at once so you keep the best result.
Try it
Agentfly installs with one command on Windows and Linux, and updates itself from then on.