You’re not locked into vscode. There are plugins for other IDEs, and a ‘copilot’ cli tool very similar to Claude Code’s cli tool.
replyI also wouldn’t say you’re locked into Microsoft’s ecosystem. At work we just have skills that allow for interaction with Bitbucket and other internal tooling. You’re not forced to use GitHub at all.
You can use copilot models from OpenCode:
replyhttps://github.blog/changelog/2026-01-16-github-copilot-now-...
I'm hopeful because Microsoft already has a partnership and owns much of OpenAI so can get their models at cost to host on Azure with they already do, so they can pass on the savings to the user. This is why Opus is 3x as expensive in Copilot, because Microsoft needs to buy API usage from Anthropic directly.
replyI don’t think it’s API costs. Their Sonnet 4.6 is just 1x premium request which matches the 1x cost of the various GPT Codex models.
replySonnet is the worse model though, therefore it's expected that it is cheaper, the comparison would be Opus and GPT. That Anthropic's worse model is the same request cost as the best OpenAI model is what I mean when talking about Microsoft flexing their partnership.
replyYou could use something like [https://opencode.ai](OpenCode) which supports integration with Copilot.
reply> but with trade-offs like being locked into VSCode and the Microsoft ecosystem overall
replyYou can use GH Copilot with most of Jetbrains IDEs.