Models

Models form the foundation of the entire agent experience, offering different specialized capabilities:

  • Chat: Power conversational interactions about code and provide detailed guidance
  • Edit: Handle complex code transformations and refactoring tasks
  • Apply: Execute targeted code modifications with high accuracy
  • Autocomplete: Provide real-time suggestions as developers type
  • Embedding: Transform code into vector representations for semantic search
  • Reranker: Improve search relevance by ordering results based on semantic meaning

Best Models by Role

Model roleBest open modelsBest closed modelsNotes
Agent Plan
Qwen3 Coder (480B)
Qwen3 Coder (30B)
Devstral (27B)
Kimi K2 (1T)
Claude Opus 4.1
Claude Sonnet 4.6
GPT-5
Gemini 2.5 Pro
Closed models are slightly better than open models
Chat Edit
Qwen3 Coder (480B)
Qwen3 Coder (30B)
Claude Opus 4.1
Claude Sonnet 4.6
GPT-5
Gemini 2.5 Pro
Closed and open models have similar performance
Autocomplete
QwenCoder2.5 (1.5B)
QwenCoder2.5 (7B)
Codestral
Mercury Coder
Closed models are slightly better than open models
Apply
FastApply
Relace Instant Apply
Morph Fast Apply
Closed models are better than open models
Embed
Nomic Embed Text
Voyage Code 3
Morph Embeddings
Closed models are slightly better than open models
Rerank
zerank-1
zerank-1-small
Voyage Rerank 2.5
Morph Rerank
Open models are beginning to emerge for this model role

Learn More About Models

Continue supports many model providers, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Ollama, Amazon Bedrock, Azure, xAI, and more. Models can have various roles like chat, edit, apply, autocomplete, embed, and rerank.
Read more about model roles, model capabilities and view models in the YAML Reference.

Example Model Setup Instructions

Frontier Models

Claude Sonnet 4.6 from Anthropic
  1. Get your API key from Anthropic
  2. Add Claude Sonnet 4.6 to your Continue config
  3. Add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY to your environment or config
  4. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Qwen Coder 3 480B from Qwen
  1. Get your API key from OpenRouter
  2. Add Qwen Coder 3 480B your Continue config
  3. Add OPENROUTER_API_KEY to your environment or config
  4. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
GPT-5 from OpenAI
  1. Get your API key from OpenAI
  2. Add GPT-5 your Continue config
  3. Add OPENAI_API_KEY to your environment or config
  4. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Kimi K2 from Moonshot AI
  1. Get your API key from OpenRouter
  2. Add Kimi K2 your Continue config
  3. Add OPENROUTER_API_KEY to your environment or config
  4. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Gemini 3.1 Pro from Google
  1. Get your API key from Google AI Studio
  2. Add Gemini 3.1 Pro your Continue config
  3. Add GEMINI_API_KEY to your environment or config
  4. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Grok Code Fast 1 from xAI
  1. Get your API key from xAI
  2. Add Grok Code Fast 1 your Continue config
  3. Add XAI_API_KEY to your environment or config
  4. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Devstral Medium from Mistral AI
  1. Get your API key from Mistral AI
  2. Add Devstral Medium your Continue config
  3. Add MISTRAL_API_KEY to your environment or config
  4. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
gpt-oss-120b from OpenAI
  1. Get your API key from OpenRouter
  2. Add gpt-oss-120b your Continue config
  3. Add OPENROUTER_API_KEY to your environment or config
  4. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension

Local Models

Need a quick setup walkthrough? Check out Using Ollama with Continue: A Developer's Guide.
These models can be run on your computer if you have enough VRAM.
Their limited tool calling and reasoning capabilities will make it challenging to use agent mode.
Qwen3 Coder 30B
  1. Add Qwen3 Coder 30B your Continue config
  2. Run the model with Ollama
  3. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
gpt-oss-20b
  1. Add gpt-oss-20b your Continue config
  2. Run the model with Ollama
  3. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Devstral Small 27B
  1. Add Devstral Small your Continue config
  2. Run the model with Ollama
  3. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B from Qwen
  1. Add Qwen2.5-Coder 7B your Continue config
  2. Run the model with Ollama
  3. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Gemma 3 4B from Google
  1. Add Gemma 3 4B your Continue config
  2. Run the model with Ollama
  3. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Qwen2.5-Coder 1.5B from Qwen
  1. Add Qwen2.5-Coder 1.5B your Continue config
  2. Run the model with Ollama
  3. Click Reload config in the config selector in the Continue IDE extension
Context SelectionMCP servers