Continue vs Nx: Which Is Better in 2026?

Continue is an open-source AI code assistant for VS Code and JetBrains that brings customizable, model-flexible AI help right into the editors developers already use. Rather than locking you into one closed platform, Continue lets you configure exactly which models you want to use — including your own keys and even local models — giving you control, flexibility and freedom from vendor lock-in while you get AI completion, chat and assistance inside your normal workflow.

Its strengths are openness and configurability. As an open-source project, it is transparent, community-driven and free, and its flexibility around models means you can tune it to your preferences, budget and privacy needs. It works across popular IDEs, so teams using different editors can share a consistent AI-assisted experience. For developers who want modern AI coding help without committing to a single proprietary editor or model provider, Continue offers a powerful, adaptable middle ground that respects how they already work.

Continue is ideal for developers and teams who value open source, want to choose and control their AI models, and prefer adding AI to their existing VS Code or JetBrains setup rather than switching editors. It sits alongside tools like Cline and Aider in the open-source AI-coding ecosystem, and is a flexible alternative to closed AI editors like Cursor. If you want customizable, open, model-agnostic AI assistance integrated into the IDE you already love, Continue is a standout choice that keeps you in control of both your workflow and your AI.

Nx is a powerful, extensible build system and monorepo toolkit that helps teams manage and scale codebases — especially monorepos — with smart caching, task orchestration, code generation and deep project insights. While it's widely used in the JavaScript and TypeScript world, Nx is designed to be flexible across technologies, providing a comprehensive set of tools for keeping large, multi-project codebases fast, organized and maintainable. It goes beyond just speeding up builds to offer a full ecosystem for structuring and working in monorepos effectively.

At its core, Nx provides computation caching (locally and remotely) so tasks like building, testing and linting aren't repeated unnecessarily, and intelligent task scheduling that understands project dependencies and runs work in the right order and in parallel — dramatically speeding up builds and CI. Beyond performance, Nx offers code generation to scaffold consistent code, tools to understand and visualize the relationships between projects in a monorepo, and a plugin ecosystem that extends it to many frameworks and use cases. This makes it not just a build accelerator but a toolkit for managing the complexity of large codebases and enforcing good structure as they grow.

Nx is used by development teams — from startups to large enterprises — that work in monorepos or large codebases and want to keep them fast, consistent and maintainable. By combining caching, orchestration, code generation and project insights, it helps teams scale their development without builds grinding to a halt or their codebase becoming unmanageable. Its flexibility and rich tooling have made it a popular choice for serious monorepo setups. As monorepos and large, multi-project codebases become more common and teams seek to manage them well, comprehensive build systems and monorepo toolkits are increasingly valuable. For teams that want a powerful, extensible system to keep their monorepos fast and well-organized — with caching, orchestration and project tooling — Nx offers a robust, mature and widely-adopted solution.