Macroscope vs Greptile: AI Code Review Comparison for 2026

Last updated: October 2026.

Macroscope and Greptile both review GitHub pull requests with AI, but Macroscope detected 48.3% of bugs on its own 118-bug benchmark against Greptile's 23.6% (on the 72 bugs Greptile was evaluated on) and charges per KB reviewed, while Greptile charges $30 per seat per month plus credits and supports GitLab and self-hosting, which Macroscope does not.

Macroscope vs Greptile is one of the most common comparisons teams make when choosing an AI code review tool. Both tools review pull requests automatically, both build context from your codebase, and both aim to catch bugs that human reviewers miss. The differences are in how much they detect, how they price, how they enforce team standards, and what happens after a bug is found.

TL;DR: Macroscope vs Greptile (October 2026)

• Bug detection: On Macroscope's own 118-bug benchmark, Macroscope detected 48.3% (57/118). Greptile detected 23.6% (17/72), and was only evaluated on 72 of the bugs.
• Pricing: Macroscope charges $0.05 per KB of diff reviewed ($0.50 floor per review), no seats. Greptile Pro is $30 per seat per month with 50 credits per seat, then $1 per extra credit; a Base review costs 1 credit, Plus 3, Apex 10.
• Getting started: Macroscope gives every new workspace $100 in usage credit. Greptile has a free Starter tier (1 active developer, 50 credits per month) and a 14-day trial on Pro.
• Custom enforcement: Macroscope's Check Run Agents are plain-English Markdown checks that run as their own GitHub check runs and can block merges. Greptile applies custom rules and learned team conventions inside its review.
• Auto-fix: Macroscope's Fix It For Me opens a fix PR, runs CI, and iterates until tests pass.
• Platform: Macroscope is GitHub only, with no self-hosting. Greptile supports GitLab as well as GitHub, and its Enterprise plan offers self-hosting, SSO/SAML and GitHub Enterprise.

How do Macroscope and Greptile approach AI code review?

Both tools review pull requests with codebase context rather than the diff alone; Macroscope is tuned for few, high-precision bug comments, while Greptile is built around an indexed understanding of the whole codebase.

Macroscope reviews every language the same way. For each pull request, an agent reads the change, then explores the surrounding code in your repository to understand the context beyond the diff, and evaluates whether the change introduces a bug. It can also use web search for current library and API documentation. This is why Macroscope catches cross-file bugs, the kind where changing a function signature in one file breaks a caller in another. It also reviews configuration, documentation and scripts, subject to file exclusions.

Greptile indexes your repository so its reviewer can reason about how functions, files and modules relate, and uses that context when it reviews a pull request. Its review depth is tiered: Base, Plus and Apex reviews cost 1, 3 and 10 credits respectively, so a team chooses how much review effort to spend per PR.

The practical difference shows up in two places: how many real bugs each tool catches on the same dataset, and how the bill behaves as PR volume grows. The next two sections cover each.

Which catches more bugs, Macroscope or Greptile?

On Macroscope's own 118-bug benchmark, Macroscope detected 48.3% of bugs and Greptile detected 23.6%, though Greptile was evaluated on 72 of the 118 bugs rather than all of them.

The most concrete comparison comes from Macroscope's Code Review Benchmark, which tested five AI code review tools against 118 real production bugs across 8 languages (Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Python, Rust, Swift, TypeScript).

Tool	Bugs detected	Detection rate
Macroscope	57 / 118	48.3%
CodeRabbit	54 / 118	45.8%
Cursor Bugbot	50 / 118	42.4%
Greptile	17 / 72	23.6%
Graphite Diamond	21 / 115	18.3%

The per-language results for the two largest language sets:

• Go (22 bugs): Macroscope 86.4% (19/22), Greptile 53.8% (7 of the 13 Go bugs it was evaluated on).
• Python (18 bugs): Macroscope 50.0% (9/18), Greptile 18.8% (3 of the 16 Python bugs it was evaluated on).

These per-language samples are small, so a few bugs move the percentage a lot. Read them as direction, not precision.

Two caveats matter. First, Greptile was evaluated on 72 bugs, not all 118, so its rate is measured on a smaller set. Second, this is Macroscope's benchmark. Every vendor's benchmark deserves scrutiny, including ours, which is why the methodology is published. Teams evaluating a Greptile alternative should also run both tools side by side on their own pull requests.

Which produces less noise?

Macroscope's Code Review v3 reports 98% review-comment precision, up from 75%, with 22% fewer comments overall; Greptile does not publish a directly comparable precision figure on the same basis.

Detection rate tells you how many bugs a tool finds. Precision tells you how many of its comments are worth acting on. A reviewer that flags every possible issue will eventually be ignored, and an ignored reviewer catches nothing.

Macroscope's v3 engine was built around that tradeoff: fewer, better comments. Per the Code Review v3 write-up, overall review-comment precision rose to 98% from 75%, and total comment volume fell 22%.

Greptile takes a different route to relevance: it calibrates to each team over time using feedback on its comments. That can work well for teams that actively react to and reply to review comments. The honest way to compare noise for your codebase is the same as for detection: run both on a sprint of real PRs and count which comments your engineers act on.

How does Greptile pricing work in 2026?

Greptile Pro costs $30 per seat per month, includes 50 credits per seat, and charges $1 for each extra credit, where a Base review costs 1 credit, a Plus review 3, and an Apex review 10.

Greptile moved to a seat-plus-credit model, so it is neither purely per-seat nor purely usage-based. Here is how the current plans work, per greptile.com/pricing:

• Starter: free for 1 active developer, with 50 credits per month.
• Pro: $30 per seat per month, 50 credits included per seat, $1 per additional credit. 14-day trial.
• What a seat is: any developer who got a Greptile review in that billing period. Greptile bills active developers, not headcount, so an engineer who never opened a PR that month is not a seat.
• Credits per review: Base 1, Plus 3, Apex 10.
• Enterprise: custom pricing, with self-hosting, SSO/SAML and GitHub Enterprise.
• Discounts: free for qualified non-commercial open source, and 50% off for pre-Series A startups under $2M revenue.

What credits mean in practice. 50 credits per seat is 50 Base reviews, about 16 Plus reviews, or 5 Apex reviews before the $1-per-credit rate applies. So the review tier you choose matters as much as the seat count. A team that runs mostly Base reviews and stays under 50 per seat pays $30 per active developer. A team that runs deeper Plus or Apex reviews, or whose AI coding agents push many PRs per developer, moves into per-credit charges faster.

Worked example (Greptile Pro, Base reviews). 10 active developers is 10 seats, $300 per month, with 500 credits included. If those developers trigger 600 Base reviews in the month, the extra 100 credits add $100, for $400 total. If the same 600 reviews were Plus reviews, they would use 1,800 credits, so 1,300 extra credits add $1,300. The tier choice moves the bill more than the headcount does.

How does Macroscope pricing work?

Macroscope is usage-based: $0.05 per KB of diff reviewed with a 10 KB minimum per review, no seat fees, and $100 in usage credit on every new workspace.

The current Macroscope pricing:

• Code Review: $0.05 per KB of diff reviewed, 10 KB minimum per review ($0.50 floor).
• Status: $0.05 per commit.
• Agent: $0.01 per credit, with 1,000 Agent credits included per workspace per month.
• One prepaid workspace balance covers Code Review, Status and Agent, with optional auto-refill.
• Spend controls: caps per review and per PR (defaults $10 per review and $50 per PR, adjustable), monthly budget limits, auto-review turned off by repo or label, and file exclusions.
• Getting started: every new workspace gets $100 in usage credit. A card is collected at checkout.
• Open source: free for qualified non-commercial open-source projects.
• No per-seat fees, no seat minimums, no annual commitment.

Cost per review follows diff size. A small fix under 10 KB costs the $0.50 floor. A 30 KB feature costs $1.50. A 700 KB refactor would be $35, under the default $50 per-PR cap. Customers who subscribed to the legacy seat plan before March 2026 keep it; it is not current pricing.

Pricing with AI coding agents. As tools like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor generate more PRs per developer, a seat-based bill stays tied to people while the work grows. Macroscope's bill tracks the work directly, with per-review, per-PR and monthly caps as guardrails. Greptile sits in between: seats set a base, and credits scale with review volume and tier. For a deeper walkthrough, see what AI code review costs per pull request.

How do custom checks compare: Check Run Agents vs Greptile rules?

Macroscope's Check Run Agents are separate GitHub check runs, each defined in plain-English Markdown and able to block a merge, while Greptile's custom rules and learned conventions shape what its single review comments on.

Macroscope Check Run Agents

Check Run Agents are custom AI checks defined as plain-English Markdown files in .macroscope/check-run-agents/, one file per agent. They can enforce anything you can describe: architecture rules, naming conventions, migration patterns, security policies. Each agent has repository context and can be scoped to specific directories or file patterns.

Each agent runs as its own named GitHub check run, appearing as a separate entry in the PR checks panel rather than as a section inside one review comment, so it fits your existing merge requirements. Setting conclusion: failure fails the check run, which blocks the merge once that check is required in branch protection or a repository ruleset. Each agent can also choose its own model, so a security gate and a naming check do not have to run on the same one.

Check Run Agents can pull evidence from connected tools during a run, such as Sentry, Slack, PostHog, LaunchDarkly, BigQuery, Jira, Linear and MCP servers.

Greptile rules and learning

Greptile supports custom rules written in natural language, and it learns team conventions from how engineers respond to its comments. The result is one review that increasingly reflects what your team cares about.

The difference

Greptile's approach shapes one review, implicitly and over time. Macroscope's Check Run Agents are separate, named checks with their own pass/fail state, closer to a custom CI gate than a review preference. Teams that want strict, auditable, per-policy enforcement that shows up as a distinct required check tend to prefer Check Run Agents. Teams that want one review that absorbs team conventions organically may prefer Greptile.

What happens after a bug is found?

Macroscope's Fix It For Me turns a review comment into a fix PR that runs your CI and iterates until tests pass, so the loop from detection to a validated fix happens inside GitHub.

Macroscope Fix It For Me

When Macroscope detects a bug, you reply to the review comment with "fix it for me." Macroscope then:

1. Creates a new branch from your feature branch
2. Implements the fix using codebase context
3. Opens a pull request
4. Runs your CI pipeline (GitHub Actions)
5. If CI fails, reads the failure logs and commits another attempt
6. Repeats until tests pass

The CI iteration step is the point. Fix It For Me does not just suggest a fix and hope it works; it validates the fix against your test suite. See the Fix It For Me guide.

Greptile

Greptile's review comments include suggested changes, and many teams route its findings into the coding agent they already use. For teams that already live in a local coding agent, that hand-off can feel natural. For teams that want detection, fix and CI validation in one GitHub workflow, Fix It For Me is more integrated.

Can you review before you push?

Yes: the Macroscope CLI runs the same review from your terminal before you push, with plugins for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode.

The Macroscope CLI runs macroscope codereview from any repository against your working branch. It also installs commands inside the coding agents you already use: Claude Code (/macroscope:codereview), Codex ($macroscope:codereview), Cursor (/codereview) and OpenCode (/macroscope-codereview). Autopilot, via /macroscope:autoloop, drives an iterative review, validate and fix loop that keeps working the detected issues rather than just listing them. CLI reviews are billed via Agent credits.

Greptile also offers ways to review outside the PR. If terminal review is central to your workflow, try both on the same branch.

Feature comparison table

The short version: Macroscope leads on measured detection, usage-based pricing and merge-blocking custom checks; Greptile leads on GitLab support and self-hosting.

Feature	Macroscope	Greptile
Benchmark detection (Macroscope's 118-bug benchmark)	48.3% (57/118)	23.6% (17/72, evaluated on 72 bugs)
Review-comment precision	98% (Code Review v3, up from 75%)	Not published on a comparable basis
Pricing model	Usage-based: $0.05/KB reviewed, $0.50 floor	$30/seat/month, 50 credits per seat, $1 per extra credit
Review tiers	One review, priced by diff size	Base 1, Plus 3, Apex 10 credits
Getting started	$100 in usage credit per new workspace	Free Starter (1 developer, 50 credits/month); 14-day trial on Pro
Open source	Free for qualified non-commercial projects	Free for qualified non-commercial projects
Startup discount	None listed	50% off for pre-Series A under $2M revenue
Custom checks	Check Run Agents: separate GitHub check runs that can block merges	Natural-language rules plus learned conventions inside one review
Auto-fix	Fix It For Me (branch, PR, CI loop until tests pass)	Suggested changes; hand-off to your own coding agent
Auto-approve	Approvability (auto-approves low-risk PRs, escalates risky ones)	Not covered here
CLI	macroscope codereview, plus plugins for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode	Available
AI agent	Agent (answers codebase questions, writes code, opens PRs, in Slack)	Not covered here
Git hosts	GitHub only	GitHub and GitLab
Self-hosting	Not available	Enterprise plan
SSO/SAML, GitHub Enterprise	Not covered here	Enterprise plan
Security	SOC 2 Type II; does not train on customer code	See Greptile's trust documentation

Which Macroscope features does Greptile not match?

Macroscope's distinct features are Approvability, Status, the Agent, and merge-blocking Check Run Agents, which together extend review into approval, reporting and code changes.

Approvability

Approvability evaluates each pull request and can auto-approve low-risk PRs while escalating risky ones. That removes the wait for a human reviewer on routine changes (dependency bumps, typo fixes, simple config changes) while making sure complex changes still get human eyes. It is opt-in, and teams can add their own eligibility policy in .macroscope/approvability.md.

Status

Macroscope Status processes every commit ($0.05 per commit) and produces summaries of what the team shipped, from commit-level feeds to weekly digests, so engineering leads can follow the work without reading every commit message.

Agent

Macroscope Agent answers questions about your codebase, writes code and opens pull requests, including from Slack. It connects to tools like Jira, Linear, PostHog, Sentry, LaunchDarkly, BigQuery, Amplitude and GCP logs, which is what powers context-aware code review. Agent is priced at $0.01 per credit, with 1,000 Agent credits included per workspace per month.

Integrations

Macroscope integrates with Slack, Jira, Linear, Sentry, PostHog, BigQuery, LaunchDarkly, Amplitude, GCP logs and MCP servers, so review and Agent work can use ticket context and production signals.

Which Greptile features does Macroscope not match?

Greptile's real advantages are GitLab support, self-hosting on Enterprise, a free single-developer tier, a startup discount, and tiered review depth.

GitLab support

Greptile supports GitLab as well as GitHub. Macroscope supports GitHub only today; GitLab and Bitbucket are not supported. For teams on GitLab, Greptile is the option between these two.

Self-hosting, SSO/SAML and GitHub Enterprise

Greptile's Enterprise plan includes self-hosting, SSO/SAML and GitHub Enterprise. That matters for teams with strict data residency requirements or those who cannot send code to an external service. Macroscope does not offer self-hosting.

A free tier for one developer, and a startup discount

Greptile's Starter tier is free for 1 active developer with 50 credits per month, and pre-Series A startups under $2M revenue get 50% off. Macroscope's equivalent on-ramp is $100 in usage credit per new workspace, with no startup-specific discount.

Tiered review depth

Greptile lets teams choose Base, Plus or Apex reviews at 1, 3 or 10 credits. That gives explicit control over review depth per PR. Macroscope runs one review, priced by diff size.

Learning from team feedback

Greptile adjusts to your team's preferences based on how engineers respond to its comments. Macroscope's customization is explicit instead: you write Check Run Agents and an Approvability policy in your repository.

Which should you choose, Macroscope or Greptile?

Choose Macroscope if you are on GitHub and care most about catching real bugs with few comments and paying for actual review work; choose Greptile if you need GitLab, self-hosting, or a free single-developer tier.

Use these questions in order. The first one that gives a clear answer usually decides it.

1. Where is your code hosted? If it is GitLab, choose Greptile. Macroscope is GitHub only.
2. Do you need self-hosting, SSO/SAML or GitHub Enterprise on the vendor's terms? If self-hosting is a hard requirement, choose Greptile Enterprise. Macroscope does not self-host.
3. Is bug detection the top priority? On Macroscope's own 118-bug benchmark, Macroscope detected 48.3% and Greptile 23.6% (on 72 bugs). If catching production bugs before merge is the main goal, start with Macroscope and verify on your own PRs.
4. How does your PR volume compare to your headcount? If AI coding agents mean each developer opens many PRs, compare Macroscope's per-KB cost with Greptile's credits at the review tier you would actually use. If PR volume is low and steady and you prefer a per-person budget line, Greptile's seat model is easy to forecast.
5. Do you want custom policies to block merges? If yes, Check Run Agents run as their own required checks.
6. Do you want fixes validated in CI automatically? If yes, Fix It For Me runs your CI and iterates until tests pass.
7. Are you a solo developer or an early startup? Greptile's free Starter tier and 50% startup discount are real advantages. Macroscope's $100 in usage credit covers an evaluation on real PRs.

Choose Macroscope if:

• You are on GitHub and bug detection is your top priority.
• You want pricing that follows the work instead of seats, with per-review, per-PR and monthly caps.
• You want merge-blocking custom checks written in plain English.
• You want an integrated detect, fix and validate loop.
• You want auto-approval for low-risk PRs, Status reporting, or an Agent in Slack.

Choose Greptile if:

• You are on GitLab.
• You need self-hosting.
• You are a single developer who fits in the free Starter tier, or a pre-Series A startup that qualifies for 50% off.
• You want explicit control over review depth with Base, Plus and Apex tiers.

How do you evaluate both side by side?

Both install as GitHub Apps and can run on the same repository at the same time, so the most reliable test is a sprint of real pull requests reviewed by both.

To try Macroscope:

1. Install at macroscope.com. The 5-minute setup guide covers it.
2. Every new workspace gets $100 in usage credit. A card is collected at checkout, and spend controls cap cost per review, per PR and per month.
3. Push a PR to any connected repository. Macroscope reviews it automatically, with no configuration required.

To try Greptile:

1. Start on the free Starter tier or the 14-day Pro trial.
2. Connect your GitHub or GitLab account.
3. Greptile indexes your repositories and begins reviewing PRs.

Then compare on three things: real bugs caught, comments your engineers acted on, and the monthly bill at your actual PR volume and review tier. More alternatives are in best Greptile alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Macroscope better than Greptile for AI code review?

On Macroscope's own 118-bug benchmark, Macroscope detected 48.3% of production bugs (57/118) and Greptile detected 23.6% (17/72, evaluated on 72 bugs). Macroscope's Code Review v3 also reports 98% review-comment precision. Greptile's advantages are GitLab support, self-hosting on Enterprise, a free single-developer tier and a startup discount. For a GitHub team focused on catching bugs, Macroscope is the stronger fit; for GitLab or self-hosted requirements, Greptile is.

How much does Greptile cost in 2026?

Greptile Pro is $30 per seat per month with 50 credits included per seat, then $1 per additional credit. A Base review costs 1 credit, Plus 3 and Apex 10. A seat is any developer who got a Greptile review that billing period. The Starter tier is free for 1 active developer with 50 credits per month, Enterprise is custom, qualified non-commercial open source is free, and pre-Series A startups under $2M revenue get 50% off.

How much does Greptile cost compared to Macroscope?

Macroscope charges $0.05 per KB of diff reviewed with a $0.50 floor per review and no seat fees. Greptile charges $30 per active developer per month plus $1 per credit beyond 50 per seat. For a team of 10 active developers running 600 Base reviews a month, Greptile is $300 in seats plus $100 in extra credits. Macroscope's cost for the same 600 reviews depends on diff size: $300 if every review were at the $0.50 floor, more for larger diffs, with per-review and per-PR caps.

Does Greptile have a free trial?

Yes. Greptile Pro has a 14-day trial, and its Starter tier is free for 1 active developer with 50 credits per month. Macroscope has no time-limited trial; every new workspace gets $100 in usage credit instead, and a card is collected at checkout.

What is the difference between Greptile Base, Plus and Apex reviews?

They are Greptile's review levels, priced in credits: a Base review costs 1 credit, Plus costs 3, and Apex costs 10. Pro includes 50 credits per seat per month, so the level you choose determines how quickly a team moves into per-credit charges.

Which catches more bugs, Greptile or Macroscope?

On Macroscope's own benchmark of 118 real production bugs, Macroscope detected 48.3% while Greptile detected 23.6% on the 72 bugs it was evaluated on. In Go, Macroscope caught 19 of 22 bugs and Greptile 7 of 13; in Python, Macroscope caught 9 of 18 and Greptile 3 of 16. Samples are small, so run both on your own PRs too.

Can I use Macroscope and Greptile together?

Yes. Both install as GitHub Apps and can run on the same repositories simultaneously. Teams often run both during an evaluation to compare output quality on the same pull requests.

Does Macroscope work with GitLab?

No. Macroscope supports GitHub only today, as a GitHub App. GitLab and Bitbucket are not supported, and there is no self-hosted option. Greptile supports GitLab, so for GitLab teams Greptile is the option between these two.

Can Macroscope auto-fix bugs that it finds?

Yes. Reply "fix it for me" to a review comment and Macroscope creates a fix branch, implements the fix, opens a PR, runs your CI and iterates until tests pass. From the terminal, /macroscope:autoloop in the Macroscope CLI drives an iterative review, validate and fix loop.

What are Check Run Agents and how do they compare to Greptile rules?

Check Run Agents are custom AI checks written in plain-English Markdown in .macroscope/check-run-agents/. Each runs as its own GitHub check run, can use connected tools for evidence, and blocks the merge on failure once the check is required. Greptile's custom rules and learned conventions shape the output of its single review instead. See the Check Run Agents guide.

What is Macroscope's Approvability feature?

Approvability is Macroscope's auto-approval feature. It evaluates each pull request, auto-approves low-risk changes such as dependency bumps or typo fixes, and escalates risky ones to human reviewers. It is opt-in, and teams can define their own eligibility policy in .macroscope/approvability.md.

How does pricing change as AI coding agents open more PRs?

With Macroscope, cost follows review work: more and larger diffs cost more, capped per review, per PR and per month. With Greptile, the seat base stays tied to active developers while credits scale with reviews, and deeper Plus or Apex reviews cost 3 or 10 credits each instead of 1. Compare both at your real PR volume and the review tier you would use.