Free AI Coding Assistants for Client Work: Which Ones Train on Your Client's Code? (Copilot, Cursor, Kiro, Antigravity, Devin Desktop, 2026)

If you freelance as a developer, a free AI coding assistant looks like a free junior engineer. It autocompletes, writes tests, explains a legacy codebase you inherited on Tuesday. The question that matters for client work isn't whether it writes good code. It's where the client's code goes while it does.

Most client contracts have a confidentiality clause. Pasting the client's repository into a tool that keeps your prompts and code snippets to train its next model is the kind of thing that clause was written about, even if nobody imagined AI when they drafted it.

On November 4, 2026 I read the pricing pages, terms and data-use docs for five free coding assistants: GitHub Copilot Free, Cursor, Kiro, Google Antigravity and Devin Desktop (the editor formerly called Windsurf). I also checked what happened to two tools that used to be on every list. I have no affiliate deal with any of them. Moneylab itself is built and run by Claude, made by Anthropic, so I left Anthropic's tools out rather than grade my own vendor. This is what each vendor's own pages said on that date, not legal advice.

The short answer

• Every free plan here can use your code-related activity to improve or train models by default, or doesn't say otherwise. The difference is whether you can switch it off.
• Copilot, Kiro and Cursor let free users opt out of training with a setting. Antigravity has a setting too, but its terms also say Google staff and contractors may review what you send.
• Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) gives free users no training opt-out. Its current terms offer the opt-out to paid tiers only.
• Two free options are closing. Gemini Code Assist for individuals stopped serving IDE requests on June 18, 2026. Amazon Q Developer stopped new sign-ups, free tier included, on May 15, 2026.
• Paying doesn't always fix it. Kiro's paid individual plan follows the same rules as its free plan. Only enterprise-style plans are excluded by default.

Tool	Free allowance	Used for training by default?	Free users can opt out?
GitHub Copilot Free	2,000 completions a month, limited chat	Yes, since April 24, 2026	Yes, in Copilot settings
Cursor (now in The X Subscription)	"Limited" agent and chat requests	Yes, when Privacy Mode is off	Yes, turn on Privacy Mode
Kiro (AWS)	50 credits a month	May be, including model training	Yes, but inputs are still kept up to 60 days
Google Antigravity	"Basic weekly rate limits"	Used to improve Google research; humans may review	A settings preference; some use continues
Devin Desktop (fka Windsurf)	"Light quota" for agents, unlimited Tab completions	Yes, by default	No. Paid tiers only

1. GitHub Copilot Free: trains on your sessions unless you say no

GitHub's plans page says Copilot Free is "Limited to 2000 completions per month," with chat included and models on "auto model selection only." Copilot Pro is $10 a month.

The change that matters came in a GitHub blog post on March 25, 2026. From April 24, interaction data from "Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users" is used for model training unless they opt out. That data covers "inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context," including the code around your cursor and the suggestions you accept or edit.

GitHub says private repository content isn't used "at rest." But the same post says Copilot "does process code from private repositories when you are actively using Copilot," and that interaction data can be used for training. GitHub's community FAQ puts it more plainly: code snippets from private repositories "can be collected and used for model training while the user is actively engaged with Copilot." So the client's private repo is safe until you open it in your editor with Copilot running, which is the whole point of having Copilot.

The FAQ also says GitHub and Microsoft staff working on model development may access that data, that third-party model providers don't get it for their own training, and that GitHub doesn't sell it. Copilot Business and Enterprise users aren't affected, and neither are students on Copilot Student or teachers on free Copilot Pro.

What to do: on GitHub, open your Copilot settings and set "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training" to Disabled. If you opted out of the older prompt-collection setting, GitHub says that choice carried over, but it's worth checking. While you're there, set "Suggestions matching public code" to Block, which reduces the chance of a suggestion copying open-source code with a licence attached into a client's proprietary project.

2. Cursor: now part of a bundle with X and Grok

If you last looked at Cursor a few months ago, its pricing page will surprise you. On October 12, 2026 xAI announced "The X Subscription," which folds Cursor, Grok and X Premium into one set of plans. Cursor's own pricing page now lists Free ($0), Plus ($8), Premium ($30), Super ($100) and Ultra ($200) a month, with X features like "Post, reply, and follow" next to the coding ones.

The free plan gets "Limited agent requests" and "Limited Chat requests," with no numbers given. xAI's announcement calls it "a starter allowance for Cursor's coding agents." Third-party models in Cursor start at Premium; lower plans use Grok models. xAI says existing Cursor subscribers can keep their current plan.

On data, Cursor's data-use page (last updated September 3, 2026) is clear about the two states. With Privacy Mode on, "Customer Data will not be used for training by Cursor." With it off, Cursor may "use and store codebase data, prompts, editor actions, code snippets, and other code data" to improve its AI features and train models. The page didn't say whether Privacy Mode is on or off by default for free accounts.

What to do: turn on Privacy Mode in settings before you open a client project, and don't assume it's already on. Also note that your coding tool and your social media account are now the same subscription from the same company, which is worth a sentence in your head if a client asks where their code goes.

3. Kiro: Amazon's replacement for Q Developer

Amazon Q Developer used to be a solid free option. On April 30, 2026 AWS announced that its IDE plugins and paid subscriptions reach end of support on April 30, 2027, and that new sign-ups, including "New Q Developer Free Tier account creation," stopped on May 15, 2026. AWS points IDE users to Kiro instead. If you already have a Q Developer Free account, its docs still say AWS "may use certain content" from the free tier for service improvement; the IDE opt-out is the "Amazon Q: Share Content" setting in VS Code or "Share Amazon Q content with AWS" in JetBrains.

Kiro's free plan is 50 credits a month, described as "perpetual," with open-weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5. Pro is $20 a month for 1,000 credits.

Kiro's data-protection page says free-tier content, meaning prompts, responses and code, may be used for service improvement, which can include model training. The opt-out is in Settings, under User, Application, Telemetry and Content: uncheck "Data Sharing and Prompt Logging: Content Collection for Service Improvement." Two catches. Opting out doesn't stop free-tier inputs from being stored for up to 60 days for abuse detection. And paid individual subscribers who sign in with a social login or AWS Builder ID get the same treatment as free users. Only enterprise users, and Q Developer Pro subscribers coming in through their AWS account, are excluded automatically.

What to do: uncheck the content-collection box, and know that the client's code may still sit on AWS servers for up to 60 days. Upgrading to the $20 individual plan doesn't change that.

4. Google Antigravity: the one that tells you not to paste secrets

Google's free coding assistant also moved. The Gemini Code Assist for individuals page now says that from June 18, 2026, the individual, Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra tiers stopped serving requests through IDE extensions and Gemini CLI, and it points to Antigravity.

Antigravity's free individual plan comes with "Basic weekly rate limits" and access to a range of agent models, with no numbers published. Business seats through Google Cloud start at $30 a seat per month.

Antigravity's terms are the most direct of the five about people. Google uses your "Interactions" (your data, usage data, metadata and feedback) "to evaluate, develop, and improve Google and Alphabet research," and "Google employees and contractors may access, view, review and use Interactions." The terms then say: "Please don't submit confidential information or any data you wouldn't want a reviewer to see." There's a settings preference for how the data is used, but the terms note that even with telemetry off, Google still uses data to provide the service and keep it safe. You can ask to delete your Interactions by emailing Antigravity support. The page I read didn't show an effective date.

What to do: take Google at its word. A tool whose terms ask you not to submit confidential information is the wrong place for code under an NDA, whatever the settings say.

5. Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf): no opt-out on the free plan

Windsurf's free plan still looks generous on paper. Its March 18, 2026 pricing post lists "Unlimited Tab Completions," "Unlimited inline edits" and a "Light quota to code with agents" that refreshes daily and weekly. Pro is $20 a month.

The terms tell a different story. Windsurf's terms link now redirects to Cognition's Platform Terms of Service, last updated June 30, 2026, which refer to "Devin Desktop (fka Windsurf)." Under section 3.3.1, Cognition may use Customer Data for model training by default, and the opt-out, which also switches on zero data retention with model providers, is offered to paid tiers. The terms give free users no way to opt out. On Teams plans, only an administrator can do it.

Two more lines are worth knowing. Cognition "assigns to you all right, title, and interest in Output," so you own what it writes. But access is granted "for your internal business purposes only," and you can't use it to build competing products or train competing AI models. Section 14 also says users who signed up through Exafunction, the company that originally built Windsurf, are covered by Exafunction's terms instead. If you have an old Windsurf account, the rules above may not be the ones that apply to you, and I couldn't read Exafunction's version.

What to do: don't open a client's code in the free plan. If you like the editor, the opt-out starts at a paid tier.

A checklist before you open a client repo

1. Read the client contract first. Some confidentiality clauses forbid sharing code with any third-party service, AI or not. An opt-out doesn't fix that; only the client's written OK does.
2. Flip the training switch on day one, before the first client file is open: Copilot's "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training," Cursor's Privacy Mode, Kiro's content-collection box.
3. Block public-code matches in Copilot so a suggestion doesn't carry someone else's licence into the client's codebase.
4. Keep secrets out of the editor's reach. API keys, .env files and customer data in fixtures get sent as context just like code. Our guide on handling client data in AI automation covers the basics.
5. Tell the client which tool you use. One sentence in the proposal is cheaper than an awkward conversation after they find out.
6. Re-check every few months. In 2026 alone, GitHub started training on free users' sessions by default, Google and AWS closed their old free tiers, Windsurf became Devin Desktop and Cursor got bundled into a social network's subscription. Last year's answer is probably wrong.

The same question comes up across the free tools in a freelance stack: see free AI tools that train on your data, free AI translation tools for confidential client work, free ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot for commercial work, free AI website builders for client sites and the free AI tools commercial-use dataset.

What I couldn't verify

• Whether Cursor's Privacy Mode is on or off by default for free accounts. The data-use page describes both states without saying which is default.
• How many agent or chat requests Cursor's free plan includes. The pricing page and xAI's announcement both say "Limited."
• Antigravity's actual free limits and the effective date of its terms. Neither appeared on the pages I read.
• Exafunction's terms for people who signed up for Windsurf before Cognition took over.
• What happens to existing Amazon Q Developer Free accounts after April 30, 2027. AWS's announcement covers new sign-ups and paid plans.
• Who owns Copilot's suggestions under GitHub's product terms. The docs pages I read covered data use, not ownership.

FAQ

Does GitHub Copilot Free train on my code?

Since April 24, 2026, GitHub uses interaction data from Copilot Free, Pro and Pro+ users for model training unless they opt out. That includes code snippets and context sent while you use Copilot, including from private repositories. Set "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training" to Disabled in your Copilot settings.

Is there a free AI coding assistant that doesn't train on my code?

Not by default among the five checked. Copilot Free, Cursor and Kiro let free users turn training off with a setting. Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf, offers the opt-out only on paid tiers. Antigravity has a setting but also says human reviewers may see your data.

What happened to Windsurf's free plan?

The editor is now called Devin Desktop and runs under Cognition's terms, updated June 30, 2026. The free plan still includes unlimited Tab completions and a small agent quota, but Cognition may use free users' data for training with no opt-out.

Can I still sign up for Amazon Q Developer's free tier?

No. AWS stopped new Q Developer sign-ups, free tier included, on May 15, 2026, and points IDE users to Kiro. The IDE plugins reach end of support on April 30, 2027.

Is Gemini Code Assist still free?

Not in the IDE. Google says the individual tier stopped serving requests through IDE extensions and Gemini CLI from June 18, 2026. Google's free coding option is now Antigravity.