I am a heavy user of agentic coding tools, part of my job is to evaluate their capabilities and limitations. This is an experiment where I am tracking their capabilities, limitations and my overall impression of them.
Note: Some cells have more information when you hover over them.
Colour Key:
- Requires subscription
- Minor limitation
- Moderate
- Significant
- Major
| Claude Code | Cline | OpenAI Codex | Github Copilot | Cursor | Amazon Kiro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Functionality | ||||||
| Inference Providers & Model Selection | Any that support Claude, DeepSeek, GLM and other strong models | Any | OpenAI models (US Based), Can BYO baseURL | US Based with limited context window, Can BYO | Cursor - US Based, limited by plan, BYO option heavily limits features | US Based, Waitlist |
| Sub-Agents | true | true | false | false | false | false |
| Custom Agents | true | No (coming soon) | false | false | false | false |
| Prompt templates | true | true | false | true | true | false |
| Coding abilities | Best in class | Best in class | Mid/Higher end | Lower end | Mid/Lower end | Mid range |
| Speed | Fastest | Fastest | Slow | Slow | Medium/Slow | |
| MCP Spec alignment | High | Medium/High | High | High | Medium/Low | Low |
| Operational management | ||||||
| Consumption budget controls | false | With enterprise / teams subscription | Partial | N/A | No (for BYO) | N/A |
| Developer experience | ||||||
| User Interface | VSCode, IntelliJ IDE, TUI, Zed, CLI | VSCode IDE, IntelliJ, CLI | VSCode IDE, CLI | VSCode, Zed, CLI | Standalone IDE (Fork of VSCode), CLI | Standalone IDE (Fork of VSCode) |
| Babysitting required | Low | Low | High | High | Medium/High | |
| Plan/Act modes | true | true | Partial | false | false | |
| Community size | Large | large | Medium | Large | Large | Small |
| Source | Closed source | true | true | true | Closed source | Closed source |
| Configuration management | ||||||
| File based configuration | true | false | true | Limited - no RBAC | false | Limited - no RBAC or rules |
| Per-project configuration (rules, MCP, RBAC) | true | In beta | true | Limited - no RBAC | false | Limited - no RBAC |
| Centralised configuration | Partial | With enterprise / teams subscription | false | false | No (for BYO), Yes for US based | false |
| Automation | ||||||
| Automation hooks | true | In beta | true | false | false | true |
| Headless / CLI / CI/CD mode | true | true | true | true | In beta | false |
| Automated Context Cleanup | true | true | false | false | false | |
| Access control | ||||||
| RBAC - Commands | true | With enterprise / teams subscription | Partial | false | false | false |
| RBAC - MCP tools | true | With enterprise / teams subscription | false | false | false | false |
| RBAC - Web domains | true | With enterprise / teams subscription | false | false | false | false |
| SSO | true | With enterprise / teams subscription | true | true | No (for BYO), Yes for US based | true |
| User Interface (Subjective) | ||||||
| User Interface | Best | Best | Good | Good | Good | Average |
| Cost (Estimate) | ||||||
| Monthly cost ($USD) estimate for agentic coding (used to the best of the tools limitations) | $100-$200 | $1200-$2200 | $200+ | $100-$300 | $200+ | $200+ |