GitHub Copilot vs Pi: what developers actually say
Based on 1,082 opinions on Hacker News from developers who discussed these two, most of them first-hand users.
Pi comes out ahead on overall sentiment: 84 approval versus 42 for Copilot, and 80 versus 38 over the last 90 days. Pi's lead rests on customization (150 positive, 4 negative) and open source (17 positive, 0 negative), with few cost complaints (29 positive, 5 negative). Copilot is weighed down by code quality (38 positive, 93 negative) and reliability (14 positive, 54 negative), though users still value IDE autocomplete, VS Code chat, and parallel agent work. Copilot is the better pick when you want an IDE extension and already pay for Copilot; Pi is better when you want to shape the harness yourself and accept some dependency and security rough edges.
Choose GitHub Copilot if
- Want autocomplete and chat inside VS Code
- Already pay for Copilot and want its CLI too
- Need cross-repo agent work from an IDE extension
Choose Pi if
- Want to customize the harness with your own extensions
- Care about open source and provider choice
- Want strong sentiment with few cost complaints