A-01 · Category market reportarchive-recorded · snapshot 2026-09-17
Coding AI Tools: Category Market Report
Archive-derived market report for the Coding category: 55 tool archives, median overall score 81.4/100 across five recorded dimensions, 41 free-tier listings and 163 recorded use-case entries. All figures are archive-recorded, computed from data/tools with the method and N published below.
Key numbers
Archives
55
data/tools · N=55
Overall median
81.4
score.overall · N=55
Free-tier listings
41
pricing.model · N=55
Median mo starting price
$18.5/mo
pricing.startingPrice.amount (unit=mo) · N=18
Recorded use-case entries
163
finder.useCases · N=55
Dated in snapshot window
55
updatedOn · N=55
Top 12 of 55 archives by overall score
score.overall as recorded; ties broken by slug
| # | Tool | Overall | Quality | Features | Usability | Performance | Value | Starting price | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cursor | 89.2 | 93 | 92 | 90 | 88 | 82 | $20/mo | 2026-09-06 |
| 2 | GitHub Copilot | 88.1 | 88 | 90 | 90 | 85 | 88 | $10/mo | 2026-09-06 |
| 3 | Claude Code | 86.1 | 94 | 88 | 75 | 85 | 84 | $17/mo | 2026-09-06 |
| 4 | Zed | 86.1 | 88 | 84 | 86 | 88 | 84 | $10/mo | 2026-09-15 |
| 5 | Aider | 86 | 88 | 86 | 72 | 82 | 98 | $0/mo | 2026-09-06 |
| 6 | OpenAI Codex | 84.6 | 90 | 88 | 86 | 84 | 74 | $20/mo | 2026-09-15 |
| 7 | Amazon Q Developer | 84.3 | 88 | 86 | 82 | 84 | 80 | $19/user | 2026-09-13 |
| 8 | Trae | 84.2 | 80 | 82 | 84 | 80 | 96 | $0/mo | 2026-09-16 |
| 9 | Kilo | 84 | 84 | 84 | 84 | 82 | 86 | $15/user | 2026-09-15 |
| 10 | Bito AI | 83.9 | 85 | 84 | 82 | 83 | 85 | $15/user | 2026-09-17 |
| 11 | Windsurf | 83.9 | 87 | 85 | 85 | 84 | 78 | Now part of Cognition — see windsurf.com/pricing (redir… | 2026-09-06 |
| 12 | Cline | 83.7 | 86 | 84 | 76 | 78 | 92 | $0/user | 2026-09-13 |
Dimension medians
Median of each recorded dimension across the 55 Coding archives (score.dims, scale 0–100).
Method
- Population: all archives in data/tools with category = "coding" (N=55). No sampling.
- Medians use the standard median (middle element, or mean of the two middle elements rounded to 1 decimal) over score.overall and score.dims as recorded; scores are never recomputed or re-weighted.
- Starting price statistics use only numeric pricing.startingPrice.amount values in unit "mo" (N=18); archives with null amounts are excluded and displayed via pricing.label fallback instead.
- Benchmark coverage in this category: 3 of 55 archives carry a benchmark entry; T1 benchmarks recorded: 3 / 448 across the whole library.
- Freshness: 55 of 55 archives carry updatedOn inside the ten-day snapshot window 2026-09-06 → 2026-09-17.