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What are the best semantic autocompletion plugins for Vim?

8

Options
Considered

64

User
Recs.

Jan 4, 2019

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

7 Options Considered

Best semantic autocompletion plugins for Vim	Price	Last Updated
-- YouCompleteMe	-	Dec 9, 2018
-- Deoplete	-	Jan 4, 2019
-- TabNine	Free/$29	Nov 22, 2018
-- Supertab	-	Jan 2, 2019
-- Vim Simple Complete	-	Oct 25, 2018

YouCompleteMe

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Top Con

Too many dependencies

Compared to others, it has too many dependencies. 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

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 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

Clang code completion

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 Pro

Good fuzzy completion

Top Con

Extremely heavyweight

YouCompleteMe installations are hundreds of megabytes large. See More

Top Pro

Multiple ways to complete. Multi language support

Top Con

No Julia support

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

TabNine

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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

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

Compatible with other editors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Pro

Works out of the box

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

Supertab

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Top Con

Not well maintained

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

Vim Simple Complete

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VimCompletesMe

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LogicalIdiyanale's Experience

Simple as fuck See More

MUcomplete

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Neocomplete

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