GitHub Copilot vs JetBrains Junie: what developers actually say
Based on 712 opinions on Hacker News from developers who discussed these two, most of them first-hand users.
Copilot comes out ahead on evidence volume and current sentiment: 659 opinions from 535 authors and 38% approval over the last 90 days, against Junie's 33%. Junie still has the higher lifetime approval rate, 60% versus 42%, and cleaner aspect counts: code quality 8 positive to 1 negative, cost 5 to 2, speed 4 to 1. Copilot's counts show the cost of its reach: code quality 38 positive to 93 negative, reliability 14 to 54, cost 60 to 80. Junie is the better pick mainly for developers committed to JetBrains IDEs who want cheap, predictable agent work on small tasks, and its October 2026 approval of 17% on 6 opinions is a warning.
When developers explicitly said they prefer one or switched: 1 picked GitHub Copilot, 0 picked JetBrains Junie.
Choose GitHub Copilot if
- Want one assistant across VS Code, Visual Studio and the CLI
- Value autocomplete and cross-repo agent work
- Prefer a large user base and a documented workflow
Choose JetBrains Junie if
- Work mainly inside JetBrains IDEs
- Want predictable agent behavior at low cost
- Stick to small refactors and test writing
Where each one wins and loses
Why developers switched
Picked GitHub Copilot
Picked JetBrains Junie
No explicit switches recorded.
Summaries are paraphrased. Each links to the original comment.