This isn't something that changes every week. It changes every day. New models, new prices, new tools — and
what was standard 6 months ago can easily be outdated today.
My advice: stop trying to follow everything. Pick one tool that fits how you work and go deep with it.
You'll switch again at some point — and that's completely normal.
Personal use
GitHub Copilot CLI is what I use the most right now. Not because it has the sexiest UI — it doesn't. But it sits right in the terminal, costs the same regardless of what Anthropic decides next quarter, and it just works. I can live with a slightly boring interface.
Claude (Anthropic) is what I use for thinking out loud. Architecture, security questions, explanations. But the free version is pretty limited at this point and prices keep going up. I pay for Copilot and use Claude for what can't be done in a terminal.
A year ago I only used ChatGPT. Now I barely touch it. Find your own way — it'll change anyway.
⚠️ Prices are going up — free tiers are shrinking
Most of these tools ran large free tiers in 2024-2025 while they chased users. That phase is over. Anthropic, OpenAI and Cursor have all cut what free users can do. Expect to pay if you want to use them seriously — and the prices in the table below could easily be wrong in three months.
| Tool | Best for | Price from | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | Thinking, analysis, long contexts | $20/mo | Yes (heavily limited) |
| GitHub Copilot | IDE autocomplete, CLI agent, VS Code | $10/mo | Yes (limited) |
| Cursor | Whole codebase as context | $20/mo | Yes (very limited) |
| Lovable | Full app from prompt, fastest MVP | $20/mo | Yes (very limited) |
Prices April 2026 — check official sites for current info
On 9 June 2026, Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Three days later, both models were gone — switched off for all customers globally following an export control directive from the US government. No advance warning. No technical basis shared publicly. Just an order at 5:21pm ET and a deadline to comply.
This is the most concrete demonstration yet of what AI vendor lock-in actually means in a geopolitical context. You built workflows on a model. It is gone. Not because the company went bankrupt, not because they changed their pricing — but because a government made a decision and a commercial product disappeared for hundreds of millions of users with three days' notice.
Anthropic is a US company. That means it is subject to US export controls, US courts, and — as February 2026 demonstrated — threats of being declared a "supply chain risk" by the Pentagon if it refuses to grant the military unrestricted access. OpenAI is the same. Google is the same. All the major frontier models are American, and that is not without consequences for the rest of the world.
What this concretely means for you
What is confirmed in the Fable 5 case
Source: Anthropic official statement, 12 June 2026 · Wikipedia: Claude (language model)
Best for thinking out loud. Not just code generation. Claude is good at analysing a problem, spotting weaknesses in your architecture, and explaining something you don't understand. 200,000 token context means you can paste an entire codebase and get an answer that actually makes sense.
Sits directly in the editor and suggests the next line, next function, next test. The CLI version is what I know best — it lives in the terminal and helps with commands, scripts and debugging without switching context. Perfect for anyone who lives in the terminal.
The closest you get to an AI that actually understands your project as a whole. Cursor indexes the entire codebase and can refactor across files in one go. Built on VS Code — all your extensions still work.
From idea to running app in minutes. Not just code — Lovable deploys too. Best for the MVP phase and prototypes. If you have an idea you want to show someone fast, this is the quickest tool. Supabase integration is solid.
Live feed from Anthropic, GitHub and The Verge AI. Updates automatically.
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