GitHub Copilot vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
GitHub Copilot
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
GitHub Copilot is presented as an AI pair programmer, that plugs into the user's editor. It then turns natural language prompts into code, offers multi-line function suggestions, speeds up test generation, filters out common vulnerable coding patterns, and blocks suggestions matching public code.
$10
per month
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Visual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.
$45
per month
Pricing
GitHub CopilotMicrosoft Visual Studio
Editions & Modules
CoPilot for Individuals
$10
per month
CoPilot for Business
$19
per month per user
Professional
$45.00
per month
Enterprise
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GitHub CopilotVisual Studio
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GitHub CopilotMicrosoft Visual Studio
Considered Both Products
GitHub Copilot
Chose GitHub Copilot
In terms of AI and developing tasks, GitHub Copilot is the only tool I have used so far. Copilot Work, Copilot Web, Copilot Teams, Copilot Excel, Copilot Word, Copilot Outlook, Copilot Power Point are other agents of Copilot that I use daily, but are all complementary of GitHub …
Visual Studio

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
GitHub CopilotMicrosoft Visual Studio
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GitHub CopilotMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(8 ratings)
9.0
(105 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(7 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(15 ratings)
User Testimonials
GitHub CopilotMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
GitHub
Copilit is fantastic at the following: 1. Solving simple, well-defined problems, such as implementing an algorithm, manipulating a data structure, or string manipulation and regex. 2. Implementing simple APIs that are mainly CRUD in nature, with moderate business logic inside them, which may involve some processing or passing the data through an algorithm. 3. Implementation of well-defined activities, such as implementing a connection to an Oracle DB using Hibernate or JDBC, or implementing boilerplate code for a backend service to listen to Kafka events. It is not that great when it comes to understanding and implementing code in a proprietary DSL. It struggles when implementing a major feature across a complex codebase. I believe developers should also adopt the trust-but-verify paradigm when expecting highly secure or regulated code from GitHub Copilot.
Read full review
Microsoft
When working with base C# code for desktop and web projects, then Microsoft Visual Studio is ideal as it provides the libraries and interfaces needed to quickly create, test and deploy solutions. It is when slightly more complex scenarios are required that issues can arise. The built-in integration for things like PowerBI Paginated Reports and dashboards is far from ideal.
Read full review
Pros
GitHub
  • Make code development faster and quicker.
  • Helps write better code standards for projects.
  • Provide the latest functions from the technology.
  • Notifies about the deprecated functions.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • I like how the tabs and panels are organized; everything is gathered together so you can find what you're looking for quickly.
  • If you can't find something, there's a thorough search engine that searches all of Visual Studio's features.
  • The Team Foundation Server feature is fantastic since it allows us to easily deploy and roll back changes on the server.
Read full review
Cons
GitHub
  • The only issue I faced is the context token size, it can be increase.
  • Sometime with agent mode it takes too much time, which can be reduced but I understand it also depends on the complexity of the given task.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
  • The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
  • Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
GitHub
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
Read full review
Usability
GitHub
I feel that GitHub Copilot's overall usability is good due to its tight integration with Visual Studio and the workspace. However, developers expect greater ease of use, as there is a learning curve to realize productivity gains with the tool fully. I think there is room for improvement in GitHub Copilot's UI integration within Visual Studio.
Read full review
Microsoft
I love the overall usability of Microsoft Visual Studio. I’ve been using this IDE for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen it evolve by leaps and bounds. Today, with AI and code-suggestion/completion features, developers no longer need to remember countless libraries, methods, or language syntax, or invest a huge amount of programming effort to complete a project. It truly offers everything a developer needs to program, debug, test, and deploy in a single IDE.
Read full review
Support Rating
GitHub
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
There are many resources available supporting Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft whitepapers, forum posts, and online Visual Studio documentation. There are countless demonstration videos available, as well. If users are having issues, they can call Microsoft Support, but depending on the company's agreement with Microsoft, the number of included support calls will vary from organization to organization. I've found that Microsoft support calls can be hit or miss depending on who you get, but they can usually get you with the right support person for your issue.
Read full review
In-Person Training
GitHub
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
IT is very complicated to understand all the functions that the environment has if you are not familiar with this type of development environments. It is important to select a good in-person training to achieve to understand all the possibilities and the capacity of the application. In this case, you will be able to develop a lot type of different applications.
Read full review
Online Training
GitHub
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
If you are not accustomed to develop in this type of development environments it would be complicated to follow all the parts of the course because if the course does not include a great tour with all the concepts to develop you will not have the option to understand all the functions.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
GitHub
It is useful that copilot integrates so well with vscode, which is a very common IDE. I used Tabnine for a little while but it was not that intuitive, and did not seem as helpful as GitHub copilot was. I have enjoyed GitHub copilot a lot, especially the ease of hitting the tab key and seeing quick progress in my tasks.
Read full review
Microsoft
I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.
Read full review
Return on Investment
GitHub
  • Our ROI of the purchase of Copilot was met in less than a day. The timesave cannot be overstated
  • Programmer boredom/dissatisfaction is down because of less repetetive crud work.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Using the integration between Visual Studio and our source control service, the cost of re-work and losing code is drastically reduced.
  • Paid versions of Visual Studio enable developers to be so much more productive than hacked-together open source solutions that it's hard to imagine developing in Windows without it.
  • When combined with support subscriptions and the vast array of free online help options available, Visual Studio saves our developers time by keeping them coding and testing, not wasting their time trying to guess their way out of problems or spend endless hours online hoping to find answers.
Read full review
ScreenShots