We ranked 13 AI coding assistants using only verifiable facts. Here's what we found

global — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 10:11:17 +0000

Most "best AI coding assistant" lists are opinions, affiliate links, or both. We wanted the opposite: a ranking where every number can be checked by anyone, because every fact links to the vendor's own page.

So we took 13 AI coding assistants and scored them on facts published on their official pricing, docs, trust and privacy pages — nothing else. No benchmarks we ran ourselves, no "vibes", no paid placements.

The methodology

Four factors, with fixed weights:

Factor	Weight	What counts
Code privacy	30%	Code not used for training by default on the cheapest paid individual plan, training opt-out, a zero-data-retention option, SOC 2 Type II / ISO 27001
Capabilities	30%	Number of supported IDEs (from one official page), a CLI/terminal agent, an agent mode for multi-file edits, a self-hosted option
Price	25%	A free plan, and the cheapest paid individual plan per month (monthly billing)
Transparency	15%	Company age, a public status page, whether the models used are disclosed

A service is ranked only if at least 70% of its weighted facts are confirmed. If we couldn't verify something, it stays empty — we never guess, and "not mentioned" is never treated as "no".

What we found

Privacy defaults differ a lot. On the cheapest paid individual plan, 5 of 13 assistants state that your code is not used for training by default (Amp, Augment Code, JetBrains AI, Tabnine, Zed). For 6 others the official policy says code can be used unless you opt out or switch plans. For 2 we couldn't find an unambiguous statement — so that fact is left blank rather than guessed.

Free plans are the norm. 10 of 13 have a free tier. The exceptions are Augment Code, Claude Code and Tabnine.

CLI agents are everywhere now. Almost every tool has a terminal agent or CLI in 2026; it no longer separates the field. Self-hosting does: only a few (JetBrains AI, Tabnine, Windsurf, Zed) offer a way to run it on your own infrastructure or with local models.

The current top 5:

JetBrains AI — 85/100
GitHub Copilot — 77
Zed — 75
Amp — 71
Windsurf (Devin Desktop) — 69

The full table, every fact and its source link are on the ranking page.

Limitations (and a disclosure)

Some vendor pages block automated access. We don't bypass bot protection, so a few facts are missing — those services lose completeness, not points for "no".
We don't measure answer quality. Facts about privacy, price and features are checkable; "writes better code" isn't, at least not in a way anyone can reproduce from a public page.
Disclosure: the research and texts were produced with the help of Claude (Anthropic), and Claude Code is in this ranking. It's scored with the same formula and sources as everyone else — it's currently 10th, mainly because it has no free plan and its policy allows training unless you opt out.

Full ranking and methodology: https://global-rating.com/en/software/ai-coding/?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ai-coding

If you spot a fact that's outdated, tell us in the comments — we re-check sources and update the ranking.

DEV Community: global

We ranked 13 AI coding assistants using only verifiable facts. Here's what we found

The methodology

What we found

Limitations (and a disclosure)