GitHub Copilot Fight: VSCode ⚔️ Visual Studio 2026

For once, Visual Studio actually performs at the same level as VSCode! I guess there's finally hope that Visual Studio can catch up

GitHub Copilot in VSCode against GitHub Copilot in Rider - this time I'm testing against a large .NET project (IAP Desktop) with the question "explain the various protocol tunneling features in IAP desktop along with the most relevant source files". VSCode still wins easily 🏆

Cursor with Composer 1 against VSCode with GitHub Copilot and Claude Sonnet 4.5, for a question that requires deep analysis of a large code base. When using the same model, both perform similarly, but with Composer 1, Cursor is noticeably faster by a few seconds

Cursor against VSCode with GitHub Copilot for a question that requires deep analysis of a large code base. Both are using Claude Sonnet 4.5, and take approximately the same time to produce a good, detailed answer. In comparison, Claude Code doesn't even come close to this (well over two minutes)

Here's VSCode with GitHub Copilot side-by-side with Claude Code, on the same git repository, with the same question that requires deep analysis of a large code base to produce a decent answer.

GitHub Copilot: 1 minute, excellent answer
Claude Code: 2 minutes later, still waiting

Light snow again this morning