Continue: Open source AI code assistant for VS Code and JetBrains.

Continue review

Continue is an open source coding assistant that plugs into existing editors rather than asking developers to switch environments. Its main draw is control: teams can choose models, connect local or hosted providers, and customize how context is gathered. Continue is a good fit for engineering groups that want AI assistance but are wary of closed editor platforms. It usually requires more setup than a polished commercial editor, especially if a team wants private model routing or internal conventions, but that setup is also the point for many buyers.

In practice, Continue is most useful when the team picks a narrow workflow and measures whether the tool improves that job. For teams needing model control, developers staying in vs code or jetbrains, open source ai workflows, the important question is not whether the demo looks impressive. It is whether the generated code fits your repository, whether the tool makes its changes easy to inspect, and whether a developer can recover quickly when the model misunderstands the task.

Pricing also matters because AI coding usage can grow faster than expected. Open source with bring-your-own model costs and enterprise options. Check the vendor pricing page before buying because usage limits and model access can change. Teams should test realistic prompts, not only a single autocomplete, and estimate monthly cost for heavy users, occasional reviewers, and nontechnical collaborators separately.

The strongest reason to choose Continue is fit. It supports VS Code, JetBrains and is commonly used with JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go, Java. That makes it a credible option for teams needing model control, developers staying in vs code or jetbrains, open source ai workflows. The weaker fit is users wanting a turnkey hosted product, nontechnical app builders, teams unwilling to configure models, where a different category of AI coding tool may be more effective.