Zed

Zed is built from scratch in Rust to be the fastest code editor available. It's not an Electron app wrapping a browser. Every pixel is GPU-rendered, and it shows. Files open immediately. Scrolling is butter. Search across 100K files feels instant.

built by the team that created Atom (GitHub's previous editor). Real-time multiplayer editing is built in. Share a workspace and code together with zero setup. AI assistant integration with Claude, GPT-4, and local models via Ollama. The editor itself is free and open source. Zed offers a paid tier for team collaboration features: Zed Channels with persistent voice, screen sharing, and shared project hosting. Pricing for the pro tier isn't publicly fixed yet (still evolving as of early 2026).

Solo developers: free, and the fastest editor available. The extension ecosystem is growing but still small compared to VS Code. Check that your language server and key extensions exist before switching. Small teams: the multiplayer editing is legitimately good for pair programming. Larger teams: evaluate whether the extension gap matters for your stack.

The catch: the extension ecosystem is the real blocker. VS Code has 40,000+ extensions. Zed has hundreds. If you depend on specific VS Code extensions for your workflow (Docker integration, specific debuggers, niche language support), check before you switch. The editor is great. The ecosystem isn't there yet.