head to head · open source
CodeEdit vs fresh
CodeEdit has 23,105 GitHub stars, 1,196 forks, 213 open issues and last shipped 19 days ago. fresh has 9,399 stars, 372 forks, 369 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. CodeEdit leads on adoption by 146% (23,105 vs 9,399 stars). CodeEdit is written in Swift under MIT; fresh is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. CodeEdit has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, fresh 4%. fresh was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ide), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| CodeEdit | fresh | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Swift | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-17 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 372 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick CodeEdit if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick fresh if
- You want the fresh feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and fresh fits your workflow better
About CodeEdit
CodeEdit for macOS CodeEdit is a code editor built by the community, for the community, written entirely and unapologetically for macOS. Features include syntax highlighting, code completion, project find and replace, snippets, terminal, task running, debugging, git integration, code review, extensions, and more. [!IMPORTANT] CodeEdit is currently in development and not yet recommended for production use, however you can take part in shaping it's future by test driving pre release versions and submitting an issue to let us know what you think. Table of Contents Motivation Mission Community Activity Contributing…
read the full CodeEdit overview →
About fresh
Fresh A modern, full featured terminal text editor, with zero configuration . Familiar keybindings, mouse support, and IDE level features — no learning curve required. Official Website · Documentation · Discord · Contributing Quick Install: curl fsSL sh Fresh brings the intuitive UX of VS Code and Sublime Text to the terminal. Standard keybindings, full mouse support, menus, and a command palette — everything works the way you'd expect, right out of the box. No modes, no memorizing shortcuts. Built for real world performance: Fresh handles multi gigabyte files with negligible memory overhead and delivers…
read the full fresh overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More IDEs & Code Editors projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the IDEs & Code Editors field.
Frequently asked questions
Is CodeEdit or fresh more popular?
CodeEdit has 23,105 GitHub stars and fresh has 9,399. CodeEdit has the larger community by that measure.
Are CodeEdit and fresh free?
Both are open source. CodeEdit is licensed under MIT and fresh under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CodeEdit and fresh?
CodeEdit is written in Swift and fresh in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, CodeEdit or fresh?
Choose CodeEdit if you want the larger community (23,105 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose fresh if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.