Continue Doesn't Have a Free Plan — Here's What It Costs

⚡ Quick Verdict

No free plan. The cheapest way in is Starter at $3. Consider free alternatives in the ai coding category if budget is tight.

See Pricing →See Plans ↓

Who Should Pay for This

👤

Best For

✓Established business
✓Budget for premium tools
✓Need ai coding features
✓Professional use case
✓Want official support

What Users Say About Continue

👍 What Users Love

✓Open-source under Apache 2.0 — no vendor lock-in or proprietary protocols
✓Genuinely supports JetBrains as a first-class citizen, not an afterthought
✓YAML config and Continue Hub make team-wide standardization trivial
✓Transparent pricing: $3/M tokens Starter, $20/seat/month Team — no hidden seat costs
✓Mix local and hosted models in one extension — cheap autocomplete, expensive chat
✓Strong on-prem story for regulated enterprises (BYOK, internal proxies, no telemetry)

👎 Common Concerns

⚠Less polished UX than closed-source competitors like Cursor or GitHub Copilot
⚠Agent mode is younger than Cline's and has fewer guardrails
⚠Hub assistants quality varies — vetting community configs takes effort
⚠$3/M tokens Starter is competitive but not the cheapest if you BYO API keys directly

🆓 Free Alternatives to Continue

→ Cline

Free plan includes: full plan/act loop, mcp marketplace, byo keys

Free PlanCompare →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Continue.dev completely free to use?

Yes, the open-source Continue extension is free to install and use with your own API keys. You only pay for the AI model usage through your chosen providers (OpenAI, Claude, etc.) or use free local models via Ollama.

How does Continue compare to Cursor or GitHub Copilot?

Continue offers more model flexibility and privacy options through open-source architecture, while Cursor and Copilot provide more polished out-of-the-box experiences. Continue requires more setup but offers greater customization and vendor independence.

Can Continue work with local AI models?

Yes, Continue supports local models through Ollama integration, allowing you to run AI coding assistance entirely on your hardware without sending any code to external servers, ideal for privacy-sensitive environments.

What IDE support does Continue provide?

Continue offers native extensions for VS Code and JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, etc.) with full feature parity including chat, autocomplete, and agent capabilities.

Ready to Get Started?

See Continue plans and find the right tier for your needs.

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More about Continue

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Last verified March 2026