Tabby
Self-hosted AI coding assistant with code completion and chat.
About
Tabby is a self-hosted AI coding assistant positioned as an on-premises alternative to GitHub Copilot. Written in Rust and fully self-contained, it needs no external database or cloud service: teams run it via Docker on their own hardware, keeping code and prompts entirely private. It serves open code models such as StarCoder, CodeGemma, Qwen coder variants, and Codestral on consumer-grade GPUs, with Metal acceleration on Apple Silicon. Beyond inline completion in VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, and Vim, Tabby includes an Answer Engine chat that grounds responses in connected GitHub or GitLab repositories and documentation through built-in retrieval, plus a code browser and team analytics for tracking usage. An OpenAPI interface allows integration with existing infrastructure. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, it is adopted by enterprises with data residency requirements and by individual developers who prefer local, privacy-preserving code assistance over cloud services.
Should you use Tabby?
Pick it when
Pick it when a team with data residency rules wants a self-hosted Copilot replacement: one Docker container with no external database, inline completion in VS Code, JetBrains, or Vim, repo-grounded chat, and usage analytics on a consumer GPU or Apple Silicon.
Look elsewhere when
Skip it if you want an autonomous agent that edits files and runs commands, since Tabby centers on completion and chat; Cline or OpenHands cover that. Without an 8 GB GPU or Apple Silicon to serve models, a cloud-model assistant is simpler.
Alternatives to Tabby
- Sourcegraph Cody
Grounds chat in org-wide Sourcegraph code search without running your own GPU, but is positioned inside Sourcegraph Enterprise subscriptions.
- Continue.dev
Tab autocomplete and codebase chat in VS Code and JetBrains against any model, local Ollama included, with no server to host, but its repository is now read-only.
- Cline
Autonomous agent that edits files and runs commands with approval in VS Code or JetBrains, but it relies on a separate local or cloud model and centers on tasks, not inline completion.
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Details
- Category
- AI Code Assistants
- Price
- Free
- Platform
- Local/Desktop
- Difficulty
- Easy (2/5)
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Minimum VRAM
- 8 GB
- Added
- Apr 3, 2026