Continue.dev

Continue was the open-source answer to Copilot. It plugged into VS Code or a JetBrains IDE and let you choose the model behind it: a paid API, a model on your own hardware through a tool such as Ollama, or whatever your company allowed. That flexibility earned it more than 36,000 stars on GitHub.

In 2026 Cursor acquired the company. The website now holds a single thank-you note, which says the codebase "remains freely available as a foundation for others." The product itself is no longer being built.

What changed

Continue's FAQ says user data was deleted in line with its privacy notice, apart from records kept for legal, tax or security reasons. In July the documentation moved to the root of docs.continue.dev and lost its sign-in link.

Can you still use it?

Yes, within limits. One of the final changes switched the extension's default configuration away from the hosted hub to explicit model definitions. So it can still run with your own API key for a cloud model, or with a local model, without any Continue account.

What you lose is the future. There will be no fixes when an editor update breaks something, no support for new models and no security patches. For a personal setup with a local model, that may be acceptable for a while. For a team, an unmaintained extension with access to your codebase is hard to justify.

If your team depends on it

There are three realistic options. The first is to pin the last release and keep using it while you plan a move, which buys time but nothing more. The second is to fork it: the Apache 2.0 licence allows that, and a company with its own internal tooling team could maintain a private version. That means owning every fix from then on.

The third, and the one most teams will end up taking, is to migrate. Before you do, export the model settings and custom prompts from your Continue configuration, since most of them carry over to other tools with a little editing.

Where former users are going

Cline is the closest replacement. It's open source, actively developed and works with any model you connect, including local ones, and its agent runs inside VS Code. Developers who preferred the terminal often look at Aider, though its releases have slowed too.

If you're willing to pay, Cursor, the company that bought Continue, sells a full AI editor with Pro at $20 a month, or $16 billed yearly. GitHub Copilot Pro costs $10 and works in both VS Code and JetBrains IDEs. Claude Code comes with the $20 Claude plan. For a free autocomplete in a VS Code-style editor, Windsurf, now called Devin Desktop, has a free plan with unlimited Tab completions.

The AI coding tools guide compares these in more depth. If your reason for using Continue was keeping code on your own machine, start with Cline and a local model, which is the setup that comes closest to what Continue offered.