Claude Code vs Continue
Honest breakdown of Claude Code (anthropic's official agentic cli for delegating coding tasks from the terminal.) and Continue (open-source ai assistant for vs code and jetbrains. customizable rules, models, contexts.). Last refreshed 2026-04-30.
| Aspect | Claude Code | Continue |
|---|---|---|
| Category | cli | extension |
| Pricing | $20/mo | Free |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| License | Proprietary | Apache-2.0 |
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When to pick Claude Code
- · Senior engineers refactoring large codebases
- · Agentic workflows
- · Plugin authors
When to pick Continue
- · JetBrains users
- · Teams who want shared prompt library
- · Privacy-conscious devs