How to Choose an AI Coding Tool (Decide by Job, Not by Demo)

Choose an AI coding tool by asking one question: what’s the job — assist my typing, take over the ticket, or produce an app from nothing? Four answers cover almost every real workflow, and they map to four different tools with four different jobs.

Job 1: Faster completions in the editor you already use → GitHub Copilot

You have a codebase, an IDE you like, and no interest in switching either. GitHub Copilot drops into VS Code, JetBrains, or Neovim and stays out of the way — unlimited completions on Pro at $10/mo, agent mode for delegated changes on Pro+. It’s the cheapest seat on this list and the right default until a specific limitation forces an upgrade. See the full comparison against Cursor.

Job 2: An editor built around agents working across your whole codebase → Cursor

Once agentic edits — multi-file refactors, “fix this and update the tests,” frontier-model access on tap — are the daily workflow, the editor itself should be built for it. Cursor is free to start (Hobby), $20/mo on Pro. The switching cost from Copilot is real; pay it when agent work is the majority of your week, not the occasional favor.

Job 3: Hand off a whole ticket, not a suggestion → Devin

Bug reports, migrations, small features — assigned like you’d assign them to a junior engineer, reviewed like a PR. Devin is the delegated-engineering seat: you’re not typing alongside it, you’re reviewing after it. This is a different trust posture than Copilot or Cursor — give it scoped, well-specified tickets first, not the ambiguous ones. See Devin vs. Cursor for where the line sits.

Job 4: An app from a prompt, not a change to existing code → Bolt, Lovable, Replit, or Bubble

No existing codebase, no engineer on the team, and the goal is a working product fast. This bucket splits by who’s building: Bolt and Replit suit builders comfortable touching the generated code; Lovable targets non-engineers shipping a real product; Bubble is the no-code veteran for apps with genuine business logic (multi-table data, permissions, workflows) that outgrow prompt-to-app tools. See Lovable vs. Bolt for the split inside this bucket.

The constraint that overrides all four: compliance

If your code legally cannot touch a third-party cloud — regulated industries, strict IP-boundary policy — the job question doesn’t matter yet. Tabnine’s air-gapped, self-hosted deployment is the shortlist first, everything above second. It costs more ($39/user/mo minimum, no free tier) and trails the frontier on raw capability; that’s the price of the boundary, not a flaw.

The trap to avoid

Running Copilot and Cursor “to see which wins.” You won’t decide — you’ll pay for both and default to habit. Pick by job, not by trial. The one exception: Copilot inside the IDE plus Bolt or Lovable for greenfield prototypes is a real two-tool stack, because they’re answering different questions (edit vs. create), not competing for the same one.

Quick reference

The job is…	Tool	Entry cost
Faster typing in my existing IDE	GitHub Copilot	$10/mo
Agentic edits across my codebase	Cursor	Free (Hobby)
Hand off the whole ticket	Devin	Free to start
App from a prompt, no codebase yet	Bolt / Lovable / Replit / Bubble	Free to start
Code can’t leave our infrastructure	Tabnine	$39/user/mo

Tools need jobs. Name the job the code has, and it just picked the seat.