Same $10, same editor, ten credits against fifteen hundred. Five days to find out which number you actually feel.
by GitHub · Pro $10/mo, 1,500 AI credits
Winnerby JetBrains · AI Pro $10/mo, 10 credits, Junie included
Ten AI credits lasted four working days. That is the shortest honest summary of JetBrains AI Pro at $10 a month, and its pricing page does not say so. JetBrains meters 10 credits per 30 days, one credit to the dollar. Copilot sells Pro at the same $10 with 1,500 credits at a cent each: $15 of headroom, plus completions that never touch the meter.
The refactoring went the other way. JetBrains AI turned a sealed class hierarchy into a sealed interface across 31 files by calling IntelliJ’s own refactoring engine, and the first build compiled. Copilot rewrote the same hierarchy as text in 27 files, missed four non-exhaustive when branches, and left four compile errors for us. JetBrains also named a transactional bug in 100 seconds, because the inspection that finds it ships with the IDE.
Completions belong to Copilot: 33 of 40 stubs accepted untouched at a 190 ms median, against 28 of 40 at 1.2 seconds. That gap repeats every few minutes of a working day.
October 19 to 23, 2026, in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate 2026.1, both plugins in one checkout of a 9,400-line Kotlin 2.1 and Spring Boot 3.5 payments service: Gradle 8.14, JUnit 5 with Testcontainers, 268 tests green at the start. JetBrains AI ran on AI Pro at $10, Copilot on Pro at $10. Three rules held all week: same clean checkout per task, a completion counted only if accepted with Tab and never edited, and the task ended at handoff, so we fixed nothing the tool admitted it could not finish. Copilot’s inline completion stayed off during the JetBrains runs, since both bind Tab.
| Metric | GitHub Copilot | JetBrains AI |
|---|---|---|
| Task 1: completions accepted unmodified (of 40) | 33 ✓ | 28 |
| Task 1: median latency to first suggestion | 190 ms ✓ | 1.2 s |
| Task 2: files updated, compile errors at handoff (of 31) | 27 files, 4 errors | 31 files, 0 errors ✓ |
| Task 2: time to 268 of 268 green | 3 h 06 m | 2 h 14 m ✓ |
| Task 3: named the self-invocation | Second answer, 6 min 20 s | First answer, 1 min 40 s ✓ |
| Task 4: runs in VS Code on the same repo | Yes ✓ | No, JetBrains IDEs only |
| Task 5: metered spend on 11 agent runs | $4.28, or $0.39 a run ✓ | $13.60, or $1.24 a run |
| Winner | 🏆 GitHub Copilot: completion, latency, cost per task, any editor | JetBrains AI: JVM refactors, root-cause diagnosis, local models |
Side-by-side breakdown across key categories
| Feature | GitHub Copilot | JetBrains AI | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | VS Code, all JetBrains IDEs, Visual Studio, Neovim, Xcode, CLI | JetBrains IDEs, ReSharper and Android Studio. Nothing else | GitHub Copilot |
| How it reads your code | Repository index over file buffers. Edits land as text and the compiler checks after | The Program Structure Interface, the index behind IntelliJ refactoring and inspections | JetBrains AI |
| 31-file sealed-interface refactor | 27 of 31 files, four non-exhaustive when branches, four compile errors, 3 h 06 m | 31 of 31 through IDE refactorings, zero compile errors, 2 h 14 m | JetBrains AI |
| Metered budget at $10 | 1,500 credits at a cent each: $15 of model usage | 10 credits at a dollar each: $10 of model usage | GitHub Copilot |
| Agent | Agent mode in the IDE, plus a GitHub-side agent that opens pull requests | Junie and Claude Agent, plan-first. JetBrains reports 61.6% on SWE-Rebench | GitHub Copilot |
| Local models and offline work | Cloud only. No BYOK, nothing runs offline | Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, LiteLLM at zero credits, code stays local | JetBrains AI |
| IP indemnity | Included on Business and Enterprise | Not offered on any tier | GitHub Copilot |
| Tier | JetBrains AI | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0: 3 credits per 30 days, unlimited Mellum completion, local models at zero credits. Missing from Android Studio and both Community editions | $0: 2,000 completions and 50 chats a month, one Auto model, no agent mode |
| Individual at $10 | AI Pro $10/mo or $100 a year: 10 credits per 30 days, Junie and Claude Agent included, top-ups allowed. Bundled with the All Products Pack | Pro $10/mo or $100 a year: 1,500 credits, 1,000 base plus 500 flex. Free for verified students and teachers |
| Individual, higher | AI Ultimate $30/mo or $300 a year: 35 credits plus a 5-credit bonus | Pro+ $39: 7,000 credits. Max $100: 20,000 |
| Business | AI Pro Business $20: 20 credits. AI Ultimate Business $60: 70. AI Enterprise $60, quote-based | Business $19: 1,900 credits and IP indemnity. Enterprise $39: 3,900 |
| When you run out | Top up at $1 per credit, valid 12 months. Local models keep working either way | Nothing runs on a drained balance until the reset, so set a spending cap first |
Both meter tokens and both leave completions off the meter. JetBrains gives one credit per subscription dollar, so $10 buys $10 of usage. Copilot gives Pro 1,500 credits at a cent each, so $10 buys $15, a 50 percent edge on paper and a wider one in practice, since a Junie task reading twelve files and rerunning the suite four times cost about two credits where the same task in Copilot’s agent cost 63. For ten developers that edge compounds: Copilot Business at $19 carries 1,900 credits and IP indemnity, where AI Pro Business at $20 carries 20 and none. Our method is on the How We Evaluate page.
Copilot wins the purchase decision. JetBrains AI wins the afternoon you spend renaming one type across 31 files, and it wins the laptop that cannot reach the internet. Both of those are real. Only one of them happens every week.
33 of 40 completions at 190 ms, 428 of 1,500 credits for a week of agent work, and it still opens in VS Code on Friday.
31 of 31 files through the IDE’s own refactoring engine and zero compile errors. Nothing else here can call that engine.
Ollama and LM Studio models cost zero credits and make zero outbound calls. Copilot has no offline mode at all.
Yes. We did for five days in IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 with no conflict. Turn one set of inline completions off first, since both bind Tab: Settings, Tools, GitHub Copilot, clear Enable Completions and keep the chat. Two competing ghost texts on one line record acceptances you never intended.
Because 10 credits on AI Pro is $10 of model usage at API rates, not 10 tasks. Our 11 agent runs cost 13.6 credits in five days, and one Junie task reading 12 files and rerunning the suite four times runs about two credits. Top-ups cost $1 each and last 12 months.
No. It runs in JetBrains IDEs, ReSharper and Android Studio only. Since JetBrains IDEs 2025.3.2 you can install ACP-compatible agents from the registry without an AI subscription, the nearest thing to another vendor’s agent inside the IDE. Copilot covers VS Code, Visual Studio, Neovim, Xcode and the terminal.
Only on the bundles. AI Pro comes with the All Products Pack and dotUltimate, and a standalone IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate subscription does not include it. AI Free is also missing from Android Studio and both Community editions.
Copilot took 33 of 40 completions at 190 ms and spent 428 of its 1,500 credits on the same week that pushed JetBrains AI into a $3.60 top-up. Install that first. Then add JetBrains AI on its free tier for the Kotlin and Java refactors, since AI Free still gives you the PSI refactoring engine, unlimited local completion, and three credits a month.
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