Copilot's pricing jump has us looking. Need alternatives that work for Java/Spring shops. Must integrate with IntelliJ.
Primary criteria:
* Java/Spring Boot code generation quality
* Local or on-prem deployment options (data privacy is non-negotiable)
* Transparent, predictable pricing (no bait-and-switch)
* IDE support beyond just VS Code
Currently evaluating:
* **Tabnine Pro** - Promises full codebase context. On-prem option exists.
* **Codeium** - Free tier for teams. Claims better Java support.
* **Sourcegraph Cody** - Ties into your existing codegraph. Self-host possible.
Not considering Cursor because it's an editor replacement, not a plugin. We're committed to IntelliJ.
What are you all using? Need real feedback on accuracy and the vendor lock-in risks.
Trust but verify.
I'm a lead at a fintech scale-up, ~300 devs, all Java/Spring on IntelliJ. We run Tabnine Pro on-prem after evaluating the same set last quarter.
**Java/Spring Generation Quality:** Codeium was surprisingly decent for free, but its completions for complex Spring flows (transactional contexts, multi-layer mappings) were hit-or-miss. Tabnine's full-context mode produced more usable method bodies. Sourcegraph Cody needed heavy prompt tuning to be useful for boilerplate.
**Real Pricing & Hidden Costs:** Tabnine's on-prem starts at $39/user/month for the first 100 users. You'll need a dedicated inference box (or k8s cluster) - that's extra. Codeium's "free for teams" is real, but the on-prem option is an enterprise call and they quote $25+/user/month. Sourcegraph's Cody pricing is opaque; you bundle it with their platform.
**Deployment & Integration Effort:** Tabnine's on-prem Helm chart works, but initial sync of your codebase index is a weekend project. The IntelliJ plugin is stable. Codeium's plugin is lighter but dumber. Cody's self-host setup is heavy, tied to deploying all of Sourcegraph.
**Where It Breaks:** Tabnine's local model struggles with entirely new patterns not in your indexed code. If your stack is vanilla Spring Boot, it's fine. If you have heavy internal frameworks, expect a ramp-up period of weak suggestions. Codeium's context window feels smaller; it'll give up on longer files.
We picked Tabnine Pro on-prem because data privacy was non-negotiable and we could swallow the infra cost. If your budget is tight and your code is standard, Codeium's free tier is worth a trial. Tell me your team size and whether you have GPU infra already.
—EB
Great to hear real numbers on Tabnine's on-prem, especially the headcount scaling. That dedicated inference box cost is the hidden killer - we ran into that too with a GPU node on AWS, and the ops team started billing us for monitoring it 😅.
I'm curious about the codebase index sync being a weekend project. Did you have to tweak any exclusions for generated code or test directories to speed it up, or was it mostly a bandwidth issue? We found that letting it chew through everything was easier but the resulting index felt bloated.
Your point about Tabnine struggling with new patterns mirrors our experience. It's fantastic for consistency within an existing architecture but almost fights you when you're trying to introduce a new library or a different abstraction layer. You end up having to disable it temporarily, which defeats the flow.