Visual Studio Toolbox

Top 5 AI Tools for Visual Studio 2026

• By David Ramel
• 01/20/2026

Besides GitHub Copilot tools, which are built in to Visual Studio 2026, Microsoft's nearly three-month old flagship IDE, there are some AI-powered coding assistants in the Visual Studio Marketplace, though not nearly as many as are in the Visual Studio Code section (see the article, "Visual Studio Toolbox: Top Vibe Coding Extensions for VS Code").

To find the top extensions being used by VS 2026 developers, I went to the marketplace, filtered the offerings to the Tools/Coding section and searched for "AI," limiting results to those offerings with more than 100,000 installs.

Unlike the built-in GitHub Copilot Completions and GitHub Copilot Chat tooling, which generally require a subscription or at least a GitHub account, all of these are free. There is a Copilot Free tier, subject to quotas. Also, students, teachers and maintainers of qualifying popular open-source projects get a free Copilot ride in VS 2026.

Note that those Completions and Chat tools for older versions (Visual Studio versions 17.8-17.9), boast 1.2M and 627K installs, respectively.

Here are the top 5 tools I found with my methodology.

TONGYI Lingma 2022

• Publisher: Alibaba Cloud
• Installs: 195,373
• Rating: 33 ratings (average score 3.8, 0-5 scale)
• Cost: Free
• Release Date: June 5, 2024
• Last Updated: June 5, 2025

TONGYI Lingma is an AI-assisted coding tool developed by Alibaba Cloud that provides real-time developer assistance within Visual Studio and other IDEs. The tool supports line-level and method-level code generation, natural language to code translation, unit test generation, code comment generation, and code explanation. It also includes AI-assisted coding chat and document or code search capabilities. TONGYI Lingma uses contextual information, including cross-file context, to generate suggestions as developers type and is designed to support a wide range of programming languages. The tool is positioned for general software development workflows and includes optimizations for Alibaba Cloud SDK and API usage scenarios.

Visual chatGPT Studio

• Publisher: Jefferson Pires
• Installs: 167,386
• Rating: 33 ratings (average score 4.1)
• Cost: Free (requires connection to OpenAI-compatible APIs such as OpenAI or Azure OpenAI)
• Release Date: February 5, 2023
• Last Updated: December 27, 2025

Visual chatGPT Studio provides conversational and command-driven AI capabilities directly within the IDE. The tool offers features such as code completion, unit test generation, bug detection, code optimization, code explanation, comment and summary generation, and automated code review based on Git changes. It includes multiple tool windows for chat-based interaction, solution-wide context analysis, and advanced workflows such as IDE-aware agents that can navigate projects, modify files, apply refactors, and present diffs for review. The extension supports interaction with OpenAI-compatible services, including OpenAI and Azure OpenAI, and is designed to assist developers with both inline coding tasks and broader solution-level operations without leaving Visual Studio.

Fitten Code

• Publisher: Fitten Tech
• Installs: 162,555
• Rating: 5 ratings (average score 4.8)
• Cost: Free
• Release Date: January 29, 2024
• Last Updated: November 18, 2024

Fitten Code provides real-time code completion and a range of code generation and analysis features within the IDE. The tool supports automatic code completion, code generation, comment generation, code editing, code explanation, test generation, and error detection, with interactions available through a sidebar interface. It supports multiple programming languages commonly used in Visual Studio and is designed to assist developers with both routine coding tasks and more advanced workflows such as translating code between languages and generating tests. Fitten Code is positioned as a general-purpose AI coding assistant focused on improving development efficiency and reducing manual effort during code authoring and review.

Windsurf Plugin (formerly Codeium)

• Publisher: Windsurf
• Installs: 159,963
• Rating: 46 ratings (average score 2.8)
• Cost: Free
• Release Date: May 29, 2023
• Last Updated: April 7, 2025

Windsurf Plugin, formerly known as Codeium, provides code acceleration features such as real-time code autocomplete and IDE-integrated chat. The tool supports single-line and multi-line code completions and enables developers to interact with an AI assistant without leaving the editor. Windsurf supports more than 70 programming languages and is designed to reduce time spent on repetitive coding tasks, boilerplate generation, and external research during development. The extension focuses on accelerating code authoring and iteration while keeping developers within the Visual Studio workflow.

Tabnine - AI Chat and Autocomplete for JS and more

• Publisher: TabNine
• Installs: 121,361
• Rating: 21 ratings (average score 3.4)
• Cost: Free (paid plans and trials available)
• Release Date: September 19, 2021
• Last Updated: December 9, 2025

Tabnine provides inline code completions and an integrated AI-powered chat interface to support software development tasks. The tool enables developers to generate code using natural language, receive real-time context-aware code suggestions, create unit tests, fix errors, generate documentation, explain existing code, and assist with refactoring and maintenance tasks. Tabnine supports a wide range of programming languages and is designed to operate with an emphasis on privacy, security, and deployment control, including options for SaaS or self-hosted environments. The extension is positioned for individual developers and teams seeking AI-assisted coding workflows within Visual Studio.