Zed

About

Zed is a code editor from Zed Industries, founded by Nathan Sobo, Antonio Scandurra and Max Brunsfeld, the team behind Atom, Electron and Tree-sitter. Written from scratch in Rust with its own GPU-accelerated UI framework, it opens instantly and stays responsive in files that make other editors wheeze. Native Git support, a built-in debugger, multibuffer editing and proper Vim bindings all ship in the box rather than as extensions.

Its second act is AI: agentic editing runs inside the editor, with parallel agents working across projects while you carry on coding. Zed reached 1.0 in April 2026 and ships updates weekly. The editor itself is free forever, including unlimited use with your own API keys; a Pro plan at $10 per month adds hosted AI usage. It is open source, on macOS, Linux and Windows.

Alternatives

• Visual Studio Code

  Pick Visual Studio Code if you lean on Dev Containers, remote tunnels or its extension marketplace: it is an open source editor that is free for private or commercial use.

• Sublime Text

  Pick Sublime Text if you would rather pay once: a personal licence is $99 with three years of updates, and one key covers all your computers and operating systems.

• Nova

  Pick Nova if you want a 100% Mac-native editor from Panic: it costs $99 with a year of updates, has a 30-day free trial, and needs macOS 15.6 or later.

At a Glance

Requires

macOS 10.15 Catalina or later, with full support from macOS 12 Monterey

Price

Free (Personal plan); Pro is $10 a month, with a free trial

Also On

Windows and Linux

Get It From

zed.dev