Magic vs Refact.ai
Two Coding AI tools, side by side. Both are verified against their own live sites. Here is what each does well and who it is for, so you can choose what fits.
Magic
www.magic.dev
Frontier code models to automate software engineering
Best forOrganizations exploring frontier models for large-context code automation
What it doesMagic builds frontier code models aimed at automating software engineering and research. Its approach combines frontier-scale pre-training, domain-specific reinforcement learning for code, and ultra-long context windows for handling large codebases and complex problems.
Capabilities
Visit Magic →- Frontier code models
- Domain-specific reinforcement learning
- Ultra-long context windows
- Inference-time compute optimization
Refact.ai
refact.ai
Open-source autonomous AI coding agent for the IDE
Best forDevelopers who want an autonomous in-IDE coding agent with self-hosting and data-control options
PricingFreemium, from $10/mo · current pricing
What it doesRefact.ai is an open-source AI agent that plans, executes and deploys coding tasks inside your editor, with context-aware chat, code completion and repository search. It supports SaaS, self-hosted and on-premise deployment with selectable LLMs.
Capabilities
Visit Refact.ai →- Autonomous multi-step task execution in the IDE
- Context-aware chat with codebase retrieval (RAG)
- Real-time code completion across 25+ languages
- Self-hosted and on-premise deployment with custom LLMs
How to choose
Choose Magic if you are organizations exploring frontier models for large-context code automation. Choose Refact.ai if you are developers who want an autonomous in-ide coding agent with self-hosting and data-control options. Both sit in Coding; the right pick depends on your exact workflow and budget.
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