11 Best AI tools for developers in 2025

AI coding tools have become essential for modern developers. According to McKinsey, 67% of organizations plan to increase AI investments in the next three years. This surge in adoption addresses a critical need: developers losing over 5 hours weekly to unproductive work, duplicate efforts, and context-switching.

The best AI for coding solutions address these pain points while helping developers code faster and more efficiently.

This blog post aims to shine a light on AI tools for developers, offering insights into how these AI software development tools can be integrated into your workflow. I'll explore how these tools not only accelerate the development process but also elevate the quality of your output, making them some of the best AI for coding available today.

I hope that you embrace these emerging AI technologies to maximize your productivity and enable a more seamless software development workflow. 

How is AI helping developers right now?

2024 has been the year when AI only got better. This also led to organizations using AI in more business functions, and according to a survey by McKinsey, 67% of organizations are expected to invest more in AI in the next three years.

If you are thinking, why is there a sudden surge in AI use cases? This can be linked to how 58% of respondents in the Cortex State of Developer Report say more than 5 hours per developer per week are lost to unproductive work. 

This is followed by too much time spent on duplicate work and searching for context, topping the list as major reasons for the loss of productivity.

The AI tools being developed can help solve these problems, along with helping you think and code faster and better.

My approach to selecting the best AI tools for developers

After trying various AI tools for coding, I selected the top ones based on personal experience and community feedback. I prioritized tools that are contextually aware, support auto-completion, assist with research, integrate with IDEs, and even replicate coding styles.

I also considered some of the developer reviews from platforms like Reddit and other forums to ensure these tools are well-regarded across the community. But in the end, I'll let you decide which ai is best for coding based on your specific needs.

Pieces

Pricing: Completely free for individuals

TL;DR

Best free AI for coding with no cost for individuals.

• AI tool for developers and data scientists with long-term memory that captures 9 months of work

• Has a centralized AI copilot that learns from your interactions, bringing complete context awareness to your workflow

• Choice between cloud LLMs (Gemini, GPT-4) or local models (Llama 2, Mistral) alongside other 50+ LLMs, allows switching mid-conversation

• Multi-modal functionality supporting screenshots-to-code conversion

• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) for personalized suggestions

Pieces is one of the best AI tools for software development with long-term memory, designed to improve developer's efficiency and collaboration by allowing them to save, enrich, search, reference, and reuse their code snippets in a more organized and productivity-focused way. It's natively integrated MCP, and works together with GitHub, Cursor, and Goose.

It has desktop applications and plugins in the browser, IDE, and collaboration tools, the copilot that learns from your interactions across the toolchain, and provides personalized assistance.

Pieces Drive offers seamless integration with your existing development environment so that you avoid context switching at all costs.

The copilot can be powered by on-device AI, allowing you to choose between cloud-based Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Gemini or GPT-4, or by Local Large Language Models (LLLMs) such as Llama 2 or Mistral AI. 

By referencing your saved materials and interactions from throughout your workflow with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), Pieces Copilot gives tailored suggestions and context-generated code.

In addition, the copilot supports multi-modal functionality. You can pass in a screenshot of your code as context to the copilot, and the copilot will extract the code using on-device small language models.

Pieces’ AI-powered search helps you to access your coding materials faster and more efficiently, whether you’re actively coding or just browsing the desktop app. 

With Pieces, the safety of your data is also guaranteed, as it employs an offline-first architecture for its AI features and essential plugins.

This AI-powered coding assistant offers features like automated documentation and code accuracy checks, making it a versatile tool for developers. It also supports Git integration, allowing for seamless version control within your workflow.

Tabnine

Pricing: Tabnine offers 30 days free and $39 per user for enterprise. 

TL;DR

Best generative AI for coding across many languages

• AI-powered code completion based on context

• Supports 25+ programming languages, making it the best AI for Python coding and many others (speaking of, if you're a Python developer, check out this article about the best Python IDEs)

• Trained on both open-source and proprietary code

• Natural language processing for human-like code generation

• Debugging and test case generation features

  
  

Tabnine is an AI-powered code completion tool that suggests the most suitable lines of code completion based on the context of what the developer writes. 

Also, this AI tool for developers assists in writing cleaner code much faster and more efficiently.

A blend of open-source data and proprietary code contributed by users serves as training data for Tabnine’s machine-learning algorithm, thereby giving it the ability to provide more diverse and accurate predictions. 

In addition, it can provide code generation in over 25 programming languages. Tabnine's natural language processing capabilities allow it to understand and generate code based on human-like instructions. It also offers features like code debugging and test case generation, making it a comprehensive tool for developers.

See our comparison on GitHub Copilot vs ChatGPT vs Tabnine, or how you can use Tabnine and Pieces together.

Otter.ai

Pricing: It offers a free plan and other plans with varying features. The Pro plan costs $10 per user/month when billed annually.

TL;DR

Supporting tool for developer collaboration

• Meeting transcription for development teams

• Speaker identification in meetings

• Searchable transcripts for easy reference

• Valuable for documenting code architecture discussions

  
  

Otter.ai is a powerful meeting transcription tool that assists developers in transcribing their meetings and ensuring they don't miss out on details. 

Otter.ai can identify speakers in a meeting and attribute their words to them.

Otter.ai has a search tool to help developers search for keywords and phrases. In addition, developers can share their transcripts with teammates for seamless collaboration.

While not a traditional coding tool, Otter.ai can be invaluable for AI collaboration and project management in development teams. It can be particularly useful for voice coding and documenting team discussions about code architecture and design decisions

OpenAI Codex

Pricing: $10 per month or $100 annually, providing full access to Codex's capabilities within GitHub Copilot. Custom pricing tailored for teams and organizations, including additional features like compliance and security tools.

TL;DR

Best AI to use for coding with natural language

• Powers GitHub Copilot with GPT technology

• Translates plain English into functional code

• Excels in Python but supports dozens of languages

• 14KB memory size for better context handling

• Advanced models like GPT-4 for accurate suggestions

  
  

Codex is an AI tool developed by OpenAI to understand and write code. It is also capable of translating natural language into text. 

It's a descendant of GPT-3 and its training data consists of natural language and billions of lines of code from publicly available GitHub repositories. It serves as a link between natural language and code.

OpenAI Codex excels most in the Python programming language but is also capable of producing outputs in over a dozen languages like JavaScript, Go, Pearl, and PHP. 

In addition, OpenAI Codex can handle more contextual information than the GPT-3 while performing any task due to its 14 KB memory size. It leverages advanced models like GPT-4 to provide even more accurate and context-aware code suggestions.

Codex performs well in understanding natural language queries, making it easy for developers to describe the code they need in simple English. 

It's one of the best AI tools for developers with its ability to generate code in multiple programming languages, allowing for a large variety of developers to benefit. Codex's advanced natural language processing capabilities make it a powerful ai programmer assistant, capable of handling complex coding tasks and even assisting with code migration projects.

Amazon CodeWhisperer

Pricing: Free for individuals. The paid plan for teams starts at $19 per month.

TL;DR

Best AI model for coding security scanning.

• Real-time code generation within your IDE

• Vulnerability scanning for enhanced code security

• Support for 15 programming languages

• Works with popular IDEs like VS Code and IntelliJ IDEA

  
  

Amazon CodeWhisperer is one of the best AI tools for developers working within the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and command line. It's an excellent example of an ai ide that seamlessly integrates with your existing development environment.

Amazon CodeWhisperer generates code in real-time in the IDE based on your existing code and comments, however, some devs prefer copilot as its alternative.

After all, it has the unique functionality of scanning for vulnerabilities in your code, ensuring a more secure code output. It scans your code to identify hard-to-find security issues and provides suggestions using generative AI on how to remedy them.

CodeWhisperer also gives you the privilege of selecting from up to 15 programming languages and your favorite IDE, including both the popular VS Code and IntelliJ IDEA. This ai-powered ide enhances developer productivity while maintaining code accuracy and security.

It also offers features like multi-file editing and test-writing assistance, making it a comprehensive tool for modern developers.

GitHub Copilot

Pricing: Pricing starts at $10 per month for individuals. Copilot for businesses is $19 per month. For enterprises, it is $39 per month.

TL;DR

Best AI assistant for coding with widespread adoption

• Used by over 1 million developers and 20,000+ organizations

• Advanced code auto-completion within your IDE

• Compatible with VS Code, Neovim, and JetBrains environments

• Pull request summarization and code review suggestions

• Pricing starts at $10/month for individuals, $19/month for businesses

  
  

GitHub Copilot is one of the most used AI tools for developers. According to GitHub, their copilot has been activated by more than one million developers and adopted by over 20,000 organizations. 

This tool primarily helps developers auto-complete their code in the IDE, similar to Tabnine. As one of the leading github AI tools, it leverages the vast repository of code on GitHub to provide accurate and context-aware suggestions.

GitHub Copilot is compatible with many IDEs, including VS Code, Neovim, and JetBrains. 

In addition, it has helped to increase developer's productivity and accelerate the pace at which software is being developed. It offers features like pull request summarization and code review suggestions, further streamlining the development process.

If you're a beginner, check out this GitHub guide.

Figstack

Pricing: Pricing starts at $10 per month for individuals.

TL;DR

Best AI chat for coding explanations

• Reads and explains code in natural language

• Translates between different programming languages

• Optimizes time complexity with Big O notation analysis

• Automated docstring creation for better readability

Figstack is one of the best AI tools for web development, enabling you to read and write code across multiple languages. It has the unique ability to explain code to you in your natural language. 

Furthermore, Figstack can help to translate code between different programming languages. For example, if you need to convert a code snippet written in Python to JavaScript, Figstack is your go-to tool.

In addition, Figstack helps to optimize the time complexity of your code. It does this by measuring the efficiency of your code in Big O notation and provides suggestions on how you can improve it.

Figstack's Docstring Writer helps you craft detailed docstring for your functions to ensure they are always readable.

This feature contributes to automated documentation, making it easier for developers to maintain and share their code. It also assists with technical debt management by helping developers write cleaner, more efficient code from the start.

Replit Ghostwriter

Pricing: It has a free plan. The Hacker plan costs $7 per month, and $74 with yearly pricing. Pro plan is $20 per month, $220 with yearly pricing.

TL;DR

Best AI for SQL coding and 15 other languages.

• Online IDE with cloud-based resources

• Real-time code explanations, edits, and completions

• Git integration and multi-file editing capabilities

  
  

Replit is an online-based IDE in which developers can prototype, making use of resources available on the cloud. It’s bundled with an AI assistant called “Replit Ghostwriter” which is capable of providing real-time code explanations, edits, and completions.

Replit AI works best with JavaScript and Python code, but it supports 16 languages in total. The current list includes Bash, R, Ruby, Rust, C, C#, C++, CSS, Go, Java, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, Perl, Python, and SQL.

This versatility makes it a valuable tool for code generation across multiple languages. It also offers features like Git integration and multi-file editing, making it a comprehensive development environment.

Snyk

Pricing: Free for individual developers. The team plan is $57 per month per contributing developer, and $52 per month with annual billing. The enterprise plan is a custom quote.

TL;DR

Best for AI-powered code security.

• Finds vulnerabilities and compliance issues

• Uses machine learning with dynamic and static analysis

• Integrates with existing development workflows

• Essential for maintaining code security standards

  
  

Synk is a cloud-based code analysis tool that helps to locate the vulnerabilities in security and open-source license compliance issues in a developer's code. 

As one of the top AI tools for developers, Synk uses machine learning, along with dynamic and static analysis, to analyze code.

Snyk weaves security into your existing tools so you can find and fix security vulnerabilities right from your IDEs, pipelines, and container registries. This integration with existing development workflows makes it an essential AI developer tool for maintaining code security. It also assists with code migration projects by ensuring that security standards are maintained throughout the process.

Sourcery

Pricing: It has a free plan for open-source projects. The project plan is $10 per month and the team plan is $30 per month.

TL;DR

Great for clean code assistance.

• Helps write cleaner, more efficient code

• Identifies errors in real-time

• Removes duplicate code for better efficiency

• Customizable code handling instructions

  
  

Sourcery is another option in AI tools for developer productivity, with a central focus on assisting developers to write cleaner and more efficient code. Even though it didn’t make it to the list of best AI code generators, it still identifies errors in real time pretty well. 

In addition, it also helps to remove duplicate code, making your project more focused and efficient.

Sourcery allows you to set instructions on how code fragments should be handled. It will ensure it follows those set rules, thereby maintaining consistency and high quality throughout the project life cycle.

This feature is particularly useful for managing technical debt and ensuring code accuracy. It also offers code review suggestions, helping teams maintain high coding standards across projects

Cursor

Pricing: Has 3 plans, starts with a free account, Pro is 20$, and Business is 40$ per month.

TL;DR

Best AI for writing code with intelligent assistance.

• Smart code auto-completion and real-time optimization

• Codebase answer retrieval and contextual understanding

• One-click implementation of AI code suggestions

• ⌘ K feature for generating completely new code without selection

  
  

There is a running joke among developers about how coding in 2025 is going to be about pressing the tab key, and Cursor’s contribution to this joke is at the top.

Known for its auto-completion feature, it has also made its place under the best AI tools for business development, as shared by business owners in r/Entrepreneur.

In the rapidly evolving world of AI-powered development, Cursor IDE is making waves as one of the best AI coding tools available.

There's a running joke among developers about how coding in 2025 will involve little more than pressing the tab key, and Cursor IDE's contribution to this AI-driven future of software development is leading the pack.

• Intelligent code assistance: It can retrieve answers from your codebase, refer to files or docs, and allow you to implement the AI model's code suggestions with a single click.

• Smart rewrites: If you're making typo errors, Cursor IDE will fix your mistakes on the fly, offering real-time code optimization.

• ⌘ K feature: This powerful function lets you generate completely new code without selecting anything, streamlining the code generation process.

  
  

While other AI coding tools like GitHub Copilot and Aider are making strides in the field, Cursor IDE's unique blend of features positions it as a strong contender for the title of best AI for software development.

Its ability to understand context, provide intelligent code assistance, and enhance productivity makes it an invaluable asset for any AI developer looking to streamline their workflow, especially if you are running Pieces + Cursor.

Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting your journey in AI-powered development, Cursor IDE offers a compelling package that's worth exploring.

Conclusion

As we continue to experience the origin and future of copilots and other AI technologies, these tools stand as the go-to for AI developers seeking to remain at the forefront of innovation.

Embracing these AI tools is not just about keeping pace with technological progress; it's about redefining the boundaries of what is possible in software development. From code generation to automated documentation, these AI programmer assistants are transforming the development landscape.

When it comes to AI development itself, certain languages stand out:

• Python remains the dominant language for AI/ML projects

• JavaScript is essential for web-based AI implementations

• SQL is crucial for data-driven AI applications

The ideal AI coding tool depends on your specific needs:

• For free solutions, Pieces for Developers offers comprehensive features, you can try it yourself, it's completely free.

• For security-focused development, Amazon CodeWhisperer excels

• For natural language to code translation, OpenAI Codex is unmatched

• For beginners, GitHub Copilot provides excellent guidance

  
  

This article was first published on February 29th, 2024, and was improved as of May 8th, 2025, to improve your experience and share the latest information.