What are the best semantic autocompletion plugins for Vim?

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9 Options Considered

Best semantic autocompletion plugins for Vim	Price	Last Updated
87 YouCompleteMe	-	Nov 11, 2020
-- Deoplete	-	Oct 10, 2020
-- Vim Simple Complete	-	Nov 16, 2020
-- TabNine	Free\$15/Month	Aug 31, 2020
-- coc.nvim	0	Nov 29, 2020

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score 47 · Answer 1

YouCompleteMe

Top Pro

Good fuzzy completion

Top Con

Too many dependencies

Compared to others, it has too many dependencies. See More

SociableRinnal's Experience

often crash See More

Top Pro

Multiple ways to complete. Multi language support

Top Con

Extremely heavyweight

YouCompleteMe installations are hundreds of megabytes large. See More

v3ree's Experience

Tried to configure deoplete for Python - got it working but took too much time wasted with installing Jedi, SuperTab etc. YCM just works fine after installing it. See More

Top Pro

Clang code completion

Top Con

Works best only with C family languages

YouCompleteMe works best for C-based languages (C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++) and it's semantic engine is Clang-based which means that it only works for the C-family languages. See More

Top Pro

Works out-of-the box, not much configuration work necessary

Maybe use this: let g:ycm_add_preview_to_completeopt = 1 let g:ycm_autoclose_preview_window_after_completion = 1 nnoremap <leader>d :YcmCompleter GetDoc<CR> nnoremap <leader>j :YcmCompleter GoTo<CR> See More

Top Con

Does not have function arguments quick-preview (for Python)

You need to check the Docs too see how a function is defined. See More

Top Con

No Julia support

Only Deoplete seems to have that at the moment. See More

See All

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score 34 · Answer 2

Deoplete

Top Pro

Broad support for different autocompletion sources

Deoplete was written to be an extensible autocompletion engine. Many of its users have written add-ons supporting most well-known programming languages, as well as more esoteric sources (active tmux panes, web browser windows, GitHub issues, etc.) See More

Top Con

Difficult to set up and configure

AdaptableHegemone's Experience

awasome See More

Top Pro

Fully asynchronous

Deoplete is multithreaded and non-blocking. See More

Top Pro

easier to set up

See All

score 7 · Answer 3

Vim Simple Complete

Add Video or Image

score 5 · Answer 4

TabNine

Top Pro

Suggestions are truly context-aware

TabNine recognizes code intelligently by applying machine learning techniques to your codebase. It can generalize from only two examples, suggest completions based on lines of code before it, and even suggest completions for comments. See More

Top Con

Closed-source

The TabNine binary required by the vim plugin is proprietary, and subject to TabNine's EULA. See More

WittyOccopirmus's Experience

simply magic See More

Top Pro

Works out of the box

TabNine literally requires no configuration at all — it works as advertised out of the box. See More

Top Con

Free version is severely limited

The free version can only really provide suggestions for small projects not exceeding 200KB in file sizes. Once you hit the limit, it only provide suggestions partially. This is due to the way TabNine works — it builds an index of your project and gives suggestions based on that, and 200KB is the index limit for the free version. See More

Ray's Experience

Definitely the smoothest auto-complete plugin I've ever tried, and I've only been using this for less than a day (...it has only been out for a day or so). See More

Top Pro

Similar configuration options as YouCompleteMe

If you need to configure the behavior of completions (e.g. only showing the dropdown when you hit <C-n>), you should be able to do so through YouCompleteMe's configuration options, as the vim plugin is a fork of it. See More

Top Con

"Deep Learning" model is RAM hungry

It uses a lot of memory for a text-editor feature, and that's on top of whatever text editor you're using. Open a few instances of VS Code + TabNine + Firefox and you can easily cause your computer to start heavily swapping. (This only applies to the local ML model, not if you trust the cloud ML model instead.) See More

Top Pro

Paid features available for free when working with Rust code

The developers made paid features always available for free when auto-completing Rust code, in acknowledgment of how TabNine is made possible by the Rust ecosystem. See More

Top Pro

Single-plugin install with no other dependencies

All you need to use TabNine is install the vim plugin. It doesn't require any external dependencies, binaries, packages, language servers, etc. See More

Top Pro

Works with any language

TabNine can provide suggestions for any language, thanks to the way TabNine's completion engine works. See More

Top Pro

Extremely fast

TabNine can suggest completions extremely fast — they pop-up immediately after you type a letter with no noticeable lag, compared to some other completion plugins. It promises ~20ms response time when auto-completing anything, and it's built on Rust where speed and memory-efficiency are first-class citizens of the language and ecosystem. See More

Top Pro

Compatible with other editors

Apart from vim, you can use TabNine with Sublime Text, VS Code, and Atom. See More

Top Pro

License keys are one-time purchases

You can purchase a license key for $29 and receive free updates — there's no subscription models of any sort. The license key can also be used multiple times, on various other supported editors, since they're not locked to a single installation or machine. See More

See All

score 8 · Answer 5

coc.nvim

Top Pro

Easy to set up

score 7 · Answer 6

Supertab

Top Con

Not well maintained

Last update is 2 years old (nov 28 2016) See More

score 5 · Answer 7

Kite

Top Con

Sends code to a closed-source server over the internet

See more. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux)

Recently released for Linux! See More

ChattyXucau's Experience

I use Kite every day with PyCharm. The suggestions are smarter and more useful than PyCharm's autocomplete, saving about half my keystrokes. I also get to use it with Atom, VS Code, and Vim. See More

Top Con

Obsolete

No longer developed. Website broken. See More

Top Pro

Documentation Co-Pilot

Curated documentation appears in a separate window based on cursor position. You don't have to press any keys to see highlighted documentation. See More

Top Pro

Local Code Analysis

No code is sent to the cloud. See More

Top Pro

Line-of-code completions

Kite uses popular patterns to fill in more than just the top-level class members. Often, complete lines of code are suggested. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 8

VimCompletesMe

LogicalIdiyanale's Experience

Simple as fuck See More

score 1 · Answer 9

MUcomplete

Add Video or Image

score 10 · Answer 10

9 Options Considered

My Recommendation for YouCompleteMe

My Recommendation for YouCompleteMe

Good fuzzy completion

Too many dependencies

Multiple ways to complete. Multi language support

Extremely heavyweight

Clang code completion

Works best only with C family languages

Works out-of-the box, not much configuration work necessary

Does not have function arguments quick-preview (for Python)

No Julia support

My Recommendation for Deoplete

My Recommendation for Deoplete

Broad support for different autocompletion sources

Difficult to set up and configure

Fully asynchronous

easier to set up

My Recommendation for Vim Simple Complete

My Recommendation for Vim Simple Complete

My Recommendation for TabNine

My Recommendation for TabNine

Suggestions are truly context-aware

Closed-source

Works out of the box

Free version is severely limited

Similar configuration options as YouCompleteMe

"Deep Learning" model is RAM hungry

Paid features available for free when working with Rust code

Single-plugin install with no other dependencies

Works with any language

Extremely fast

Compatible with other editors

License keys are one-time purchases

My Recommendation for coc.nvim

My Recommendation for coc.nvim

Easy to set up

My Recommendation for Supertab

My Recommendation for Supertab

Not well maintained

My Recommendation for Kite

My Recommendation for Kite

Sends code to a closed-source server over the internet

Multi-platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux)

Obsolete

Documentation Co-Pilot

Local Code Analysis

Line-of-code completions

My Recommendation for VimCompletesMe

My Recommendation for VimCompletesMe

My Recommendation for MUcomplete

My Recommendation for MUcomplete

Don't see your favorite option? Add it.

My Recommendation for Neocomplete

My Recommendation for Neocomplete

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