Lapce

A code editor built from scratch in Rust, designed to be as fast as your terminal. If you've ever felt VS Code getting sluggish on a large project (slow file opens, laggy autocomplete, high memory usage), Lapce is built specifically to solve that. It uses a modal editing mode (like Vim) by default but works fine with standard editing too. The architecture runs a native GPU-rendered UI (not Electron, not a web view) and offloads heavy work like syntax parsing and code intelligence to a separate process. The result is an editor that opens instantly and stays responsive even on large codebases.

Completely free and open source under Apache 2.0. No paid tier, no telemetry, no extension marketplace fees. Plugin support exists but the ecosystem is still young compared to VS Code's 40,000+ extensions. Zed is the closest competitor, also Rust-based, GPU-rendered, and focused on performance. Neovim is the other obvious choice if you want maximum speed and don't mind terminal-only.

The catch: it's still in active development and not yet at 1.0. Expect rough edges: some language servers don't work perfectly, the settings UI is minimal, and the plugin ecosystem is thin. If you depend on specific VS Code extensions for your workflow, Lapce probably can't replace them yet. But if raw speed matters to you and you're comfortable with a less polished experience, it's worth watching.