GitHub Copilot: loved for autonomy, held back by code quality.
659 Hacker News opinions from 535 developers, Nov 2025 – Nov 2026. 501 come from people who say they use it. Here is what they praise, what they complain about, and who switched.
Where GitHub Copilot is strong — and where it is not.
GitHub Copilot earns 42% approval across 659 opinions. Developers praise its autonomy, while code quality is the recurring complaint. In the last 90 days it sits at 38%.
Pick it if you
- Want autocomplete inside VS Code or Visual Studio
- Already pay for Copilot and want chat and CLI in the same plan
- Work in an IDE and prefer chat over a terminal UI
Look elsewhere if you
- Care about code quality on larger changes
- Need reliable multi-step agent runs
- Want predictable model costs or generous usage limits
Where it wins and loses.
Mentions across 659 opinions. Bars are counts, not votes; a tool can be both praised and criticized on the same topic.
View data table
| Topic | Praise | Complaints | Mentions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autonomy | 24 | 13 | 37 |
| Customization | 13 | 12 | 25 |
| UX | 48 | 50 | 98 |
| Speed | 13 | 16 | 29 |
| Usage limits | 20 | 31 | 51 |
| Cost & pricing | 60 | 80 | 140 |
| Reliability | 14 | 54 | 68 |
| Code quality | 38 | 93 | 131 |
How opinion has moved.
Monthly approval, Nov 2025 – Oct 2026. Bars show opinion volume; low-volume months are still included but faded.
View data table
| Month | Approval | Opinions |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 2025 | 39% | 35 |
| Dec 2025 | 50% | 57 |
| Jan 2026 | 38% | 82 |
| Feb 2026 | 45% | 79 |
| Mar 2026 | 46% | 60 |
| Apr 2026 | 42% | 127 |
| May 2026 | 38% | 55 |
| Jun 2026 | 30% | 56 |
| Jul 2026 | 56% | 26 |
| Aug 2026 | 17% | 29 |
| Sep 2026 | 61% | 28 |
| Oct 2026 | 38% | 25 |
What developers say.
Summaries are paraphrased. Each links to the original Hacker News comment.
Praise
4 selectedUses Copilot CLI at work and finds it and other harnesses pretty good these days.
Spent about $500 of Copilot credits on work they say would have taken a team a year.
Copilot CLI was pretty good the last time they tried it and asks if quality has dropped.
Likes Copilot autocompletion for side projects because it saves a lot of tinkering time.
Complaints
4 selectedCopilot code review used up their LLM credits and left silly comments on each PR.
Copilot in Visual Studio ignores instructions and bypasses the review tool by editing via PowerShell.
Using Anthropic models through GitHub Copilot at work can quickly run up a significant bill.
Early Copilot was terrible at a Drupal 10 migration because its training data was outdated.
Questions developers ask.
Is GitHub Copilot worth it?
Is GitHub Copilot better than Claude Code?
How does Copilot compare on cost?
The data behind this page.
Across 659 opinions from 535 authors, GitHub Copilot holds a 42% approval rating. The last 90 days sit lower at 38%. Code quality is the heaviest complaint area at 93 negative mentions to 38 positive, with reliability at 54 to 14 and cost at 80 to 60. Autonomy is the only aspect that leans positive, 24 to 13, and 40 developers named Claude Code as the tool they preferred instead, against 18 who preferred Copilot over Claude Code. Monthly approval since July 2026 has ranged from 17% to 61% on 25 to 29 opinions per month, a small sample.
Every number comes from public Hacker News comments collected through the HN Search API. A language model tagged each comment for sentiment, first-hand use, topic and switches; a human spot-checks samples. No vendor can pay for placement.
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