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//Tabnine vs. GitHub Copilot//

Unlike GitHub Copilot, which is SaaS-only and tied to GitHub repos and VS Code, Tabnine is built for enterprises that need flexibility, security, and control. Tabnine deploys anywhere, SaaS, VPC, on-prem, or fully air-gapped, while integrating with every IDE, repo, and tool your teams already use, from Git and Perforce to Jira and Confluence. Its context engine understands your entire organizational environment and enforces coding standards with centralized governance, delivering secure, compliant, and scalable AI coding that fits your stack, not the other way around.
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Why enterprises and individual developers choose Tabnine over GitHub Copilot

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Deploy Anywhere

Run in the cloud, on-premises, or even in secure air-gapped environments—without sacrificing compatibility or control.

Secure & Compliant

Built with enterprise security and compliance in mind, with no data leakage, silent updates, or vendor lock-in.

Org-Aware Intelligence

Understands your full development environment by connecting to all your code, repos, and tools for richer, more relevant suggestions.

Enterprise Governance

Provides centralized control, analytics, and policy enforcement so organizations can scale AI development confidently.

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Side-by-side comparison  

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Check out this detailed comparison of the key capabilities of Tabnine and GitHub Copilot.
Code completion
Autogenerates code snippets and full functions as you type
Generates code automatically from written comments
AI chat assistance
Ask general coding questions and get relevant recommendations
Use natural language to generate code based on your specifications
Automatic generation of documentation for selected code
Recommend fixes to selected code with error(s)
Automatic generation of comprehensive test plans with detailed test cases for a specific function or code in your project
Plain language explanation of the purpose and behavior of selected code
Ability to update or refactor selected code
Dedicated onboarding agent to enable developers to quickly onboard to a new project
Tabnine's Code Explorer (a built-in command in Tabnine Chat) enables developers to onboard quickly by returning a high-level summary of the key elements of the project, including things like runnable scripts, key dependencies, and overall structure. It also suggests possible follow-up questions about this summary, allowing the developer to dive further into the relevant information for their current task.
Privacy
Ability to control the deployment location (SaaS, VPC, on-premises)
Customers can consume Tabnine as a secure SaaS offering (in a multitenant or a single-tenant environment) or do a fully private installation (on-premises or on VPC) to ensure that their code stays in the boundaries of their corporate network and isn’t shared with any external party.
GitHub Copilot is offered only as a SaaS product.
Support for fully air-gapped deployments
SOC 2 Type 2 compliance
Tabnine offers SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, which is a critical compliance that examines how well the product’s security controls perform over a prolonged period of time.
GitHub Copilot offers SOC 2 Type 1 compliance that evaluates the security controls at a single point in time.
GDPR compliance
ISO 9001 compliance
Tabnine offers ISO 9001 compliance, which is a globally recognized standard for quality management that demonstrates a company's commitment to maintaining high quality, meeting customer expectations, and improving performance.
GitHub Copilot does not offer ISO 9001 compliance.
Zero data retention policy (both for code and usage metrics)
Tabnine offers a zero data retention policy. We don’t store customer code, don’t share customer code or usage data with third parties, and don’t use customer code to train models.
GitHub Copilot retains your data. When accessing GitHub Copilot via sources other than in your IDE (such as CLI), your prompts and suggestions are retained for 28 days. This retention policy applies not only for Copilot’s Business tier but also for their Enterprise tier.
Protection
Enterprise-grade security, confirmed by industry certifications
Indemnification against IP violations for any and all generated code - subject to terms and conditions
Models
Switchable models
Multiple third‑party model options (OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral...) with admin controls; can connect internal endpoints. Tabnine admins at enterprises have complete control and can choose any specific models for their teams. They can also connect Tabnine to an LLM endpoint inside their corporate network if needed. Tabnine is committed to adding support for new, state-of-the-art LLMs as they become available. This prevents LLM lock-in, future-proofs your AI strategy, and enables you to take advantage of all the innovation happening in this space.
GitHub Copilot uses the GPT family of models to power its AI chat. Since the GPT family of models are the only model option, it prevents users from leveraging the new and powerful models that become available.
Model flexibility
Tabnine Enterprise On-Prem customers can connect any model into Tabnine including models from third party providers, open source models, and internally developed models.
Org-Aware
Uses local code awareness to create more relevant recommendations
Uses access to your company codebase(s) to create more relevant recommendations
Tabnine admins at enterprises can connect Tabnine to their organization code repos to gain global context. Unlike Copilot, we’re vendor-agnostic and enable users to connect Tabnine to any Git-based repository (e.g., GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket).
Copilot can index an organization’s GitHub repos to gain the global context.
IDEs
Support for the development environments your teams use
Tabnine includes support for VS Code, Visual Studio, the JetBrains family of IDEs, Eclipse, and Neovim.
Eclipse and Neovim IDEs are not supported.
Programming languages
Support for the programming languages your teams use
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Tabnine is named a Visionary in the September 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™
for AI Code Assistants

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Read the report
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Resources

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Tabnine vs. GitHub Copilot blog post >
Product Docs >
Tabnine Pricing >
AI Code Assistant Buyer’s Guide >