Codeium vs OpenCode vs Copilot vs Ollama vs OpenRouter: What Each One Is Actually For

Five names, one search query, and a category error.

Codeium, OpenCode, Copilot, Ollama, and OpenRouter are not five versions of the same tool. Two are coding agents. One is an agent-first IDE. One is a local model runtime. One is an API router that never writes a line of code.

That distinction is not academic. It decides what you install, what you pay for, and what you are allowed to do with your code. Someone who buys OpenRouter expecting an editor will be disappointed. Someone who installs Ollama expecting an agent will be disappointed. Someone who pays for Copilot and OpenCode separately without knowing that OpenCode can log in with a Copilot account is simply wasting money.

The short version: pick one agent and one source of models. Most of the confusion disappears once you do.

The details are where the differences show up. All five are useful, but not at the same layer.

The name "Codeium" is already out of date

Before the comparison, fix the name. Codeium has been renamed twice, and the second rename is recent enough that plenty of comparison pages still get it wrong.

• April 4, 2025: Codeium renamed the company to Windsurf. The free Codeium extensions became Windsurf Plugins.
• July 14, 2025: Cognition, the company behind Devin, acquired Windsurf.
• June 2, 2026: Cognition renamed the Windsurf editor to Devin Desktop.

Today codeium.com redirects to windsurf.com, which redirects to devin.ai/desktop. The old extension did not disappear; it lives on as Windsurf Plugins. But when someone says "Codeium" in late 2026, they usually mean Devin Desktop, the AI-native IDE that inherited Windsurf's codebase.

This matters for two reasons. First, the free autocomplete product that made Codeium popular is not the product being sold now. Second, the billing model changed. The old pitch was a generous free tier; the current product is a quota system that meters daily and weekly usage. Existing subscribers were grandfathered at $15/month Pro and $30 per seat, but new buyers pay Cognition's prices.

If you are searching for "Codeium vs Copilot" because you have the old extension installed: it still works, it is now called Windsurf Plugins, and it is no longer the center of the company's strategy. The center is Devin Desktop.

GitHub Copilot: the safe default

Copilot is the Toyota Camry of AI coding tools. It is not the most interesting choice. It is very hard to get badly wrong.

The product is no longer just autocomplete. It is an IDE extension, a CLI, a desktop app, code review on GitHub, and a coding agent that picks up GitHub issues and opens pull requests. All plans include the CLI and the app. If your team already uses GitHub, the administrative side is solved: SSO, policy controls, seat billing, audit logs. One line item worth knowing before you budget: Copilot code review also consumes GitHub Actions minutes, on top of AI credits.

That distribution is the real advantage. A solo developer can install Copilot in five minutes. A 200-person company can roll it out without building a vendor evaluation spreadsheet.

The pricing is where it gets less simple. Since June 2026, individual Copilot plans run on monthly AI credits rather than a flat request count:

Base credits are fixed and match the sticker price. The flex allotment is the variable part, and GitHub adjusts it as model pricing and efficiency change, so read the totals as "roughly this much" rather than a promise.

The Free plan is genuinely usable for trying it out: 2,000 completions a month. The catch is that you cannot choose a model; Copilot picks for you. Verified students get Copilot Student for free, with unlimited code completions, though it excludes third-party agents such as OpenCode. Paid plans unlock better models, and the most expensive models consume credits faster. A credit is not a request. The same credit buys different amounts of work depending on the model, and a long agent session can eat a monthly allowance much faster than the sticker price suggests. Note that code completions and next-edit suggestions never consume credits and stay unlimited on every paid plan, so the allowance is really a budget for chat, the CLI, and agent runs.

Verdict: Copilot is the right first purchase for most individuals and the right default for most teams. The setup cost is near zero, the admin story is already solved, and the free tier is good enough to test the habit. It is the wrong layer if model portability matters to you. You are renting GitHub's menu, not building your own.

Codeium, now Devin Desktop: the IDE that became an agent manager

Devin Desktop is what happens when an IDE stops pretending the editor is the center of the universe.

The editor is still there. It is a VS Code-family IDE with extensions, keybindings, LSPs, and a terminal. But the default surface is the Agent Command Center: a place to manage local agents, cloud agents, pull requests, and context. Spaces let related agents share context. The Agent Client Protocol lets other compatible agents run inside the same interface, alongside Devin.

That is a different bet from Copilot. Copilot meets you in the editor you already use. Devin Desktop asks you to move into an IDE built around managing a fleet of agents.

The pricing reflects that ambition:

Since March 2026, the quota is measured in tokens and weighted by model, not sold as credits. Free models do not count against it. When you run out, paid plans can buy extra usage at API list prices. Legacy Windsurf subscribers keep $15/month Pro and $30 per seat indefinitely.

The quota model is more honest than "unlimited" marketing, but it is harder to budget than a flat seat. Two developers on the same $20 plan can get very different amounts of work done depending on which model they leave selected.

Verdict: Devin Desktop is the most complete answer here if you want one GUI where agents are first-class. It is also the hardest one to recommend blindly. The product is good; the packaging has been unstable. If you want a simple, cheap autocomplete tool, Copilot Free or OpenCode will cost less and demand less attention.

OpenCode: the open-source agent with no landlord

OpenCode is the opposite bet: the agent is open source, the interface is terminal-first but also available as a desktop app and IDE extension, and the model is a configuration choice.

The feature list is the kind that sounds like a checklist until you use it. It loads the right LSPs automatically. It runs multiple sessions in parallel on the same project. It can share a link to a session. It connects to 75+ providers through Models.dev, including local models. It can log in with GitHub to use a Copilot account, or with OpenAI to use a ChatGPT Plus/Pro account.

The important part is the business model. The agent itself is free. You pay for inference, either through a provider, through a subscription you already have, or through OpenCode's own offerings:

• OpenCode Go: $10/month for a curated set of open models with generous limits. Go Plus is $40/month for higher limits.
• OpenCode Zen: pay-as-you-go access to a smaller set of models that OpenCode has tested specifically for coding agents. You add a $20 balance, and pricing is passed through without markup.
• Bring your own key: any provider, any model, including a local Ollama endpoint.

The project is not niche. Its homepage claims 208,000 GitHub stars, 950 contributors, and 16 million monthly developers. Treat vendor numbers with some skepticism, but the adoption is real.

The privacy story needs precision. OpenCode says it does not store your code or context data. That is a statement about the client, not about the model. If you send a prompt to a cloud model, that provider still receives it. The only way to keep the whole loop on your machine is to point OpenCode at a local model.

Verdict: OpenCode is the best choice for developers who want control and are willing to configure things. It is also the best glue layer in this group: it can borrow a Copilot subscription, call OpenRouter, or run a local Ollama model without changing the agent. The tradeoff is that you own the setup and the model choice. Nobody will hand you a good default.

Ollama: local models, real hardware

Ollama is not competing with Copilot. It is competing with the API bill and the privacy policy.

The pitch is simple: install it, pull a model, and you get an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on localhost. No account required for local use. No per-token bill. No prompt leaving your machine.

That last part is why people care. If you work on a sensitive codebase, a local model is the only option in this group that does not send your code to a vendor. OpenCode can drive it. So can other OpenAI-compatible clients.

The cost moves from your credit card to your hardware. Rough rule of thumb, not a spec sheet:

On a discrete GPU, VRAM is the number that matters. On Apple Silicon, it is unified memory, but the OS and your editor take a cut. Context length also eats memory, so a model that fits at 4K tokens may not fit at 32K.

Ollama also sells cloud capacity now. The Free plan includes starter credits for a small set of models. Pro is $20/month with $60 of usage credits. Max is $100/month with $300. Team is $500/month with $1,000 shared credits. The local runtime remains free and unlimited on your own hardware; the cloud plans are for people who want open models without buying a GPU.

Verdict: Ollama is the right tool when privacy or offline access is non-negotiable, and a good laboratory when you want to understand open models. It is not a Copilot replacement on its own. A local 30B model can handle boilerplate, tests, and small refactors; it will struggle with a 20-file architectural change in the way a frontier model can. Pair it with an agent, and treat the hardware as the subscription.

OpenRouter: a router, not an agent

OpenRouter sells access, not assistance.

It is one API key that can call hundreds of models across many providers, with price comparison, fallbacks, and a single bill. OpenRouter advertises "500+ models"; the live catalog returned 470 entries when this was checked. It is OpenAI-compatible, so it drops into OpenCode, Cline, custom scripts, and most tools that expect an OpenAI endpoint.

Developers use it for three things: trying a new model without opening five accounts, keeping one bill across providers, and building products that need to switch models without rewriting the integration.

The pricing is pass-through plus a fee on the money you load:

• Credit purchases: 5.5% fee, with a $0.80 minimum. Crypto is 5%.
• Inference: no markup. You pay the provider's listed per-token rate.
• BYOK: free up to $25,000 of list-price inference per month, then 5% of what the same usage would have cost on OpenRouter.
• Free models: 50 requests per day, or 1,000 per day if you have purchased at least $10 in credits. Either way there is also a 20 requests per minute cap.

That is a good deal for a developer who wants to compare models. It is a bad deal for someone who wants a predictable monthly bill. Pay-per-token is not a subscription, and an agent loop can burn through a balance faster than a chat session. The 5.5% top-up fee is small on $20 and noticeable on $2,000.

OpenRouter also is not a coding tool. It does not give you an editor, an agent, or a place to review diffs. It gives you a model endpoint. You still need a client.

Verdict: OpenRouter is infrastructure. If you are building a product that calls models, or you want to test several models against the same task, it removes a lot of account management. If you want an editor, it is the wrong purchase. The 5.5% top-up fee is the price of convenience, and it is easy to forget when you are comparing per-token rates.

Head-to-head on the questions that actually matter

Cost: the sticker price is the least useful number

Comparing these five by monthly price is misleading because they charge for different things. Copilot and Devin sell a quota. OpenCode sells a harness, and you buy the model elsewhere. Ollama sells hardware or cloud credits. OpenRouter sells tokens.

At light use, the difference is small. Copilot Free, Devin Free, OpenCode with a cheap model, and Ollama on a laptop you already own all cost $0 to $20.

At daily agent use, the cheap plans start to matter. A $10 Copilot Pro allowance is not unlimited. Devin Pro is $20 with a quota. OpenCode Go is $10 with limits by model, and Go Plus is $40. OpenRouter might cost $20 or $200 depending on what you run. Ollama has no marginal cost, but a machine that runs a useful model costs more than a year of subscriptions.

At team scale, the admin layer dominates. Copilot Business is $19 per seat and Enterprise is $39. Devin Teams starts at $80 per month with $40 full seats. Ollama Team is $500 per month with shared credits. OpenCode Enterprise is custom. The per-seat price is only half the calculation; the other half is how much time IT spends managing it.

One rule cuts through most of this: the model is the cost driver, not the logo on the agent. A cheap open model and a frontier model are not the same product, even when the same agent calls them.

Privacy: "local" is a technical claim, not a vibe

Ollama running on your own machine is the only setup here where the model itself is local. OpenCode can point at it. That is the strongest privacy position in this comparison.

Everything else sends prompts to someone. Copilot sends them to GitHub/Microsoft. Devin sends them to Cognition. OpenRouter sends them to the underlying provider. Ollama Cloud sends them to Ollama's hosted infrastructure, which says it does not log or train on them.

OpenCode is a special case. The client is open source and says it does not store your code. But if you connect it to a cloud model, that model provider still sees the prompt. Open source is not the same as local.

The useful questions are: Who can see the prompt? How long is it retained? Is it used for training? Can an admin turn logging off? Can you keep the whole loop on-device if you need to? A vendor's privacy page answers the first three; your architecture answers the last one.

The combinations that actually work

The five tools are more useful together than in a winner-take-all comparison.

OpenCode + Copilot. If your job provides Copilot, OpenCode can log in with GitHub and use that account. You get Copilot's model access inside an open-source agent. Two caveats. Third-party agents are billed against the same AI credit allowance as everything else in Copilot, so your OpenCode sessions eat the same pool as your IDE. And check your employer's terms first; a Copilot seat may not be licensed for third-party clients.

OpenCode + Ollama. The local loop. Pull a coding model, point OpenCode at the local endpoint, and keep the code on your machine. Expect slower output and weaker reasoning than a frontier model, but no per-token bill and no vendor in the loop.

OpenCode + OpenRouter. The model buffet. One API key, hundreds of models, and the ability to switch models per task. Good for experimentation; dangerous for a monthly budget if you leave a frontier model on every agent session.

Devin Desktop + ACP agents. Devin Desktop can host other ACP-compatible agents alongside Devin. If you like the IDE but not the idea of one vendor's agent, this is the escape hatch.

Copilot + GitHub. The boring default. If your team already uses GitHub, Copilot's admin and review integration are worth more than a slightly better model elsewhere.

The pattern repeats: one agent, one model source. OpenCode is the agent that can connect to almost any source. Copilot and Devin Desktop are agents that bundle the source. Ollama and OpenRouter are sources. Once you see that, the five-way comparison becomes a two-part decision.

Which one should you choose?

You want autocomplete and do not want to think about it. Start with Copilot Free. If you hit the completion cap, pay $10 for Pro. If you are a verified student, take Copilot Student instead: free, and completions are unlimited.

You want an IDE where agents are the main interface. Devin Desktop. Accept the quota and the naming history.

You want one agent that can use Claude, GPT, Gemini, Copilot, and local models. OpenCode. Budget an afternoon for setup.

Your code cannot leave your machine. Ollama plus OpenCode, running a local model. Do not pretend a cloud model is local because the client is open source.

You are building a product that calls models, or you want to compare models on the same task. OpenRouter. Treat it as infrastructure, not as an editor.

You are buying for a team. Copilot Business is the default. Compare Devin Teams and OpenCode Enterprise only if your team is already agent-heavy. The deciding factors are admin, audit, and procurement, not benchmark scores.

What I would tell a friend

If you are a solo developer paying out of pocket, start with Copilot Free for a week. If you hit the completion cap, pay $10 for Pro. If you are a student, Copilot Student costs nothing and does not cap completions. If you want to use Claude or GPT in a terminal, install OpenCode and point it at OpenRouter, Zen, or your own provider key. If you have a machine with 32GB of memory or more and sensitive code, install Ollama and run a local model through OpenCode.

Do not buy Devin Max or Copilot Max until a $20 plan has actually stopped you. Do not pay for both Copilot Pro and Devin Pro in the first month. Pick one agent, one model source, and measure for two weeks. The difference between a $10 plan and a $200 plan is usually not model quality. It is how much you let an agent run unattended.

And do not call it "Codeium" in 2026 unless you mean the old plugin. The product is Devin Desktop now, for better and for worse.

FAQ

Is Codeium still available?

Not under that name. Codeium became Windsurf in April 2025, and the Windsurf editor became Devin Desktop in June 2026 after Cognition acquired the company. The old extension lives on as Windsurf Plugins.

Is OpenCode free?

The agent is open source and free to install. You still pay for the model unless you use a free model or a local one. OpenCode Go is $10 per month, and OpenCode Zen is pay-as-you-go.

Can I use my Copilot subscription with OpenCode?

OpenCode supports logging in with GitHub to use a Copilot account. Check your plan and your employer's terms before relying on it for work.

Is Ollama an alternative to Copilot?

Only partly. Ollama gives you a local model and an API, not an editor or an agent. Pair it with OpenCode or another OpenAI-compatible client.

Does OpenRouter include a coding agent?

No. OpenRouter is an API router. It gives an agent access to many models; it does not provide the agent itself.

Which is best for privacy?

Ollama running locally, paired with a local agent. That is the only setup here where the model and the code stay on your machine.

Which is cheapest?

At low volume, the free tiers. If you are a verified student, Copilot Student is free with unlimited code completions. At high volume, local Ollama after the hardware cost, or OpenCode Go at $10 per month. OpenRouter can be cheap per token but adds a 5.5% fee when you buy credits.

Why do people compare these five?

Because search results flatten different categories into one list. Two are coding agents, one is an agent-first IDE, one is a model runtime, and one is a model router. They stack more often than they compete.

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Prices and plan details were checked against vendor pages on October 20, 2026. Vendors change pricing often; verify before you buy.