I Tested 5 AI Coding Tools for 30 Days — Here's What Actually Works

Honest, hands-on comparison. No hype. Real test results where possible. I spent a month putting five AI coding tools through their paces — from terminal-native CLI tools to full-blown AI IDEs. Some I tested directly. Some are GUI-only so I researched them based on community consensus, documentation, and pricing. Here's what I learned. The Contenders # Tool Type Starting Price 1 GitHub Copilot IDE Extension + CLI Free / $10/mo 2 Claude Code Terminal CLI Pay-per-use (Anthropic API) 3 Cursor GUI IDE (VS Code fork) Free / $20/mo 4 Windsurf GUI IDE Free / $15/mo 5 Aider Terminal CLI (open-source) Free + your own API key How I Tested For each tool where testing was possible, I ran real commands on a Linux (WSL) environment with Node.js v24 and Python 3 available. For GUI-only tools (Cursor, Windsurf), I compiled information from official docs, pricing pages, and community reports. Where a tool couldn't be tested (missing credentials, wrong