OpenAI Codex vs GitHub Copilot
OpenAI Codex (OpenAI) and GitHub Copilot (GitHub (Microsoft)) side by side on public data, as of Oct 6, 2026.
GitHub Copilot has 5.2x the VS Code extension installs of OpenAI Codex (78.6M against 15.2M).
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | OpenAI Codex | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Pulse Score | 83 | 70 |
| Overall rank | #1 | #9 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | 25.6M | — |
| Downloads, 7-day change | up 5.7% | — |
| Downloads, 30-day change | up 21.2% | — |
| VS Code installs | 15.2M | 78.6M |
| Marketplace rating | 2.9 / 5 (725) | 2.8 / 5 (395) |
| GitHub stars | 128K | — |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | 93.9K | — |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 1,782 | 75 |
| Latest stable release | 0.160.1 · yesterday | — |
| Stable releases, 90 days | ||
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | 58.2% · v4.0 | — |
| Price | Free + $8/mo | Free + $10/mo |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary |
| First released | April 2025 | June 2021 |
| Interfaces | CLI, IDE extension, Desktop, Web, Mobile, SDK | IDE plugin, CLI, Web, Mobile, Desktop app, Slack, GitHub |
| Models | OpenAI GPT models (GPT-6 family per current docs) via ChatGPT sign-in or an OpenAI API key | Selectable models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others (Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-6.1 Sol were added in Sept 2026); Pro+ and Max can also delegate tasks to third-party agents such as Claude and OpenAI Codex. |
Trends
OpenAI Codex
OpenAI's coding agent, offered as an open-source terminal CLI, an IDE extension, a desktop app and a cloud agent that works on repositories. Users sign in with a ChatGPT account or use an OpenAI API key.
Pricing: Included in ChatGPT plans: Free $0, Go $8/month, Plus $20/month, Pro from $100/month ($100, $200 or $500 tiers), Business $20/user/month billed annually ($25 monthly), Enterprise and Edu by contact. API-key use is billed at API rates (no cloud features).
Latest release 0.160.1:
- Preserve SYSTEMROOT, TEMP, and TMP when launching remote stdio MCP servers with explicitly configured remote environment variables, allowing Unix hosts to retain the Windows executor's startup…
- #51121: Backport Windows remote MCP environment preservation to 0.160.
GitHub Copilot
AI coding assistant from GitHub offering completions, chat and agent mode in IDEs, a terminal CLI, a desktop app and a cloud agent that works on assigned tasks in the background and opens pull requests. Models from several providers can be selected.
Pricing: Free; Pro $10/mo; Pro+ $39/mo; Max $100/mo; Business $19/seat/mo; Enterprise $39/seat/mo; free for verified students. Plans include monthly GitHub AI Credits (Pro 1,500, Pro+ 7,000, Max 20,000 credits) that chat, agent mode, the cloud agent, CLI and code review draw on.