Aider

A terminal tool that pairs you with the language model of your choice, on new or old codebases.

Instead of GitHub Copilot

github.com/aider-ai/aider

Screenshot from github.com/aider-ai/aider, taken 2026-10-30, shown to help you recognise the tool. It belongs to its maker. Ask us to remove it.

Pair programming has a reputation for needing two chairs and one patient friend, and Aider swaps the friend for whichever language model you like. You run it in a terminal inside your project, ask for a change in plain words, and it edits the files. The project says it can connect to almost any model, local ones included, so the model is a setting and not a marriage.

Aider scores a 5 on lock-in and self-direction, a 4 on footprint, power and delivery and a 3 on longevity.

The code is Apache-2.0 and sits under the Aider-AI organization, with no individual named and no funding listed beyond GitHub's own sponsor button. Installing means pip and a terminal, so people who have never opened one will find it steep, and the page shows no release dates, so we scored Longevity on the size of the project and not on a visible track record. The README page carries no telemetry statement either way, and we did not read the docs for one.

What stands out

• Edits your files from a terminal, using almost any model including local ones
• Apache-2.0, free, and your model provider is the only bill
• Needs pip and a terminal, and the page shows no release dates

For comparison, we also reviewed GitHub Copilot (15/30) and OpenAI Codex (20/30) and Claude Code (17/30) as a benchmark.