I've been using GitHub Copilot since the beta. It was great for about two years, then Microsoft got greedy and everything went to shit. Here's what actually happened: Microsoft realized they had developers hooked, so they jacked up the prices and started forcing you into their other products. Copilot Enterprise is now $39/user/month - for a fucking code completion tool. Meanwhile, Cursor does the same thing better for $20/month.
The real problems that made me switch:
They keep breaking it: Every few weeks there's some update that makes Copilot slower or adds more Microsoft integrations nobody asked for. The latest enterprise features all require Azure accounts. There's threads all over GitHub and Reddit where people are bitching about performance issues and memory problems with recent updates. Recent updates completely broke autocomplete in Vim mode for like two weeks, and there was this fun bug where it would suggest the same line of code 50 fucking times in a row. It's vendor lock-in bullshit.
Performance is garbage with large teams: I work with a pretty big team. Copilot used to be snappy, now it takes forever to suggest basic stuff during business hours. When everyone's coding at the same time, it's basically unusable. Sometimes it just sits there thinking about suggesting console.log() for what feels like forever on my M1 Mac. There's discussions on Medium and other places about declining performance, but Microsoft doesn't publish reliability numbers so who knows what's really going on.
You're stuck with their models: Copilot only uses Microsoft-approved models. When new models drop, Cursor usually integrates them within days. Copilot waits weeks or months because Microsoft has to go through their approval process and negotiate licensing deals. That's the difference between a startup that wants your business and a corporation that already has it.
Why Your Security Team Hates Copilot
Security teams hate Copilot because you're basically sending all your code to Microsoft and trusting they won't fuck up. Enterprise security people don't like trust exercises. GDPR compliance is a nightmare with data retention concerns that violate internal policies.
The air-gap problem: If you work at a bank, defense contractor, or anywhere that cares about secrets, Copilot is useless because it can't run completely offline. Only Tabnine Enterprise or self-hosted Continue.dev work when nothing can leave your network.
Audit logs are garbage: Copilot's audit logs tell you someone used it, but not what code it saw or suggested. Compliance teams need to trace everything. Amazon Q Developer integrates with CloudTrail if you're on AWS, and Sourcegraph Cody tracks every interaction.
GDPR is a pain in the ass: If you're in Europe, Copilot's data processing is a compliance nightmare. Microsoft can't guarantee your code stays in your region. GitHub's privacy statement is vague about data locations, and privacy experts warn about GDPR violations. Google Gemini Code Assist actually lets you control where your data lives.
What I Actually Tested
I spent a few months trying out alternatives. Here's what I remember:
Speed:
- Cursor: Fast as hell most of the time, usually faster than Copilot
- Amazon Q: Fast if you're on AWS, slow if you're not
- GitHub Copilot: Used to be fast, now takes forever during busy times, sometimes just times out
- Windsurf/Codeium: Free tier gets throttled hard during business hours, paid version is decent
Suggestion Quality:
- Cursor: Best suggestions I've used so far. Gets context way better than Copilot
- Copilot: Fine for basic stuff, shit at anything complex
- Amazon Q: Great for AWS stuff, pretty meh for everything else
- Windsurf/Codeium: Hit or miss, but the free tier is worth trying
Large Codebases (100k+ lines):
- Sourcegraph Cody: Actually understands your whole codebase, but setup is painful
- Cursor: Works fine with large projects
- Copilot: Gets confused, suggests random shit from other projects
- Everything else: Mostly just looks at current file
How to Actually Switch Without Screwing Your Team
Don't be an idiot about migration: Don't switch your entire team at once. Pick some senior developers who can handle the inevitable problems. Let them use both tools for a few weeks, then listen to their complaints before rolling out to everyone else. I learned this the hard way when we switched too many people at once and spent way too long dealing with everyone bitching about broken shortcuts and missing features.
IDE matters more than you think: If your team lives in JetBrains IDEs, JetBrains AI Assistant actually integrates properly instead of fighting the IDE like Copilot's plugin does. VS Code teams should just use Cursor - it's VS Code with better AI.
Time budget for bitching: Every developer needs 2-4 hours to stop complaining about the new tool. Tools that work like what they already know (Cursor, Codeium) cause less whining. More complex tools (Sourcegraph, Continue.dev) need more hand-holding but work better long-term.
The Open Source Option (If You Like Pain)
Continue.dev is solid if you want complete control over your AI coding setup. You can see all the code, modify whatever you want, and tell Microsoft to go fuck themselves.
Running your own models: You can run Qwen-Coder or CodeLlama on your own hardware. Setup is a nightmare, but costs drop to almost nothing for big teams once you get it working. Fair warning: you need a shit-ton of RAM and decent GPUs to run anything useful. Our first attempt was slower than typing manually.
Why open source moves faster: Continue.dev had Claude 3.5 Sonnet working in days. Copilot took 6 weeks because Microsoft had to negotiate contracts and do marketing calls.
Bottom line: Switching from Copilot isn't something to do on a Friday afternoon. But the alternatives in 2025 actually solve real problems instead of just promising to. Test a few options, pick what works for your team, and stop paying Microsoft's monopoly tax.
