Aider vs Continue

as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-10-12

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Aider edges out Continue overall, scoring 22 versus 16 and landing in 27 of 70 answers compared to Continue's 23. Aider does best with Claude (45) and shows up in every answer for local/privacy use, terminal use, and open-source picks (3 of 3 each). Continue peaks with Gemini (35) and is named in all 4 answers about free assistants, plus every answer on VS Code and open-source options (3 of 3 each). Head-to-head, Aider is named more often in 6 questions, Continue in 3, with 11 ties. Neither is ever named for beginner-focused or pull-request-review questions.

Head to head

metric	Aider	Continue
score	23	15
questions won	19	12

By assistant

Aider

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	15	25% of answers	#3.8
Claude	45	75% of answers	#5.8
Gemini	15	36% of answers	#9.0
Perplexity	16	26% of answers	#5.0

Continue

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	10	10% of answers	#3.5
Claude	15	25% of answers	#6.0
Gemini	31	45% of answers	#5.6
Perplexity	14	16% of answers	#2.7

Where they differ

Only Aider gets named for

What's the best AI coding assistant that works in the terminal?
What are the best AI coding agents that can work across a whole codebase?
What's the best AI coding assistant for a solo developer building a SaaS?
Which AI coding assistant is best for professional developers?
Which AI coding assistant is best for large codebases?
Which AI coding assistant gives the best value for the money?
What's the best AI code editor right now?
Which AI coding tool is best for writing tests?
Which AI coding tool writes the most reliable code?

Only Continue gets named for

What's the best AI coding assistant for VS Code?
What are the best alternatives to Aider?

More comparisons

Not sold on either?

Scores count how often each assistant names a product, weighted by position. How the score works · Full AI coding assistants leaderboard