head to head · open source
Zed vs devpod
Zed has 90,586 GitHub stars, 10,702 forks, 3,159 open issues and last shipped today. devpod has 15,228 stars, 582 forks, 58 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. Zed leads on adoption by 495% (90,586 vs 15,228 stars). Zed is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; devpod is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Zed has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, devpod 4%. Zed was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Zed | devpod | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 15K |
| License | Custom / other | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2025-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 582 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zed if
- You weight community size — 91K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick devpod if
- You want the devpod feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and devpod fits your workflow better
About Zed
Zed is a high performance, multiplayer code editor written in Rust, built by the creators of Atom and Tree sitter and aimed at developers who want a native, fast editing surface with AI assistance built in.
About devpod
DevPod is an open source, client only tool that builds reproducible developer environments from a devcontainer.json on almost any backend — a local Docker daemon, a Kubernetes cluster, a reachable remote machine, or a virtual machine in the cloud — for developers who want a Codespaces style workflow without a hosted service.
read the full devpod overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zed or devpod more popular?
Zed has 90,586 GitHub stars and devpod has 15,228. Zed has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zed and devpod free?
Both are open source. Zed has no licence declared in this registry, and devpod is licensed under MPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Zed and devpod?
Zed is written in Rust and devpod in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Zed or devpod?
Choose Zed if you want the larger community (90,586 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose devpod if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.