head to head · open source
Neovim vs Zed
Neovim has 103,312 GitHub stars, 7,395 forks, 1,900 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zed has 92,568 stars, 11,364 forks, 3,159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Neovim leads on adoption by 12% (103,312 vs 92,568 stars). Neovim is written in Vim Script under a custom or non-standard licence; Zed is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. Neovim has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Zed 12%. Neovim was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (text-editor), 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.
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Side by side
| Neovim | Zed | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 103K | ★ 93K |
| License | Custom / other | Custom / other |
| Written in | Vim Script | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.4K | ⑂ 11K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Neovim if
- You weight community size — 103K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Vim Script
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Zed if
- You want the Zed feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Zed fits your workflow better
About Neovim
Documentation Chat Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: Simplify maintenance and encourage contributions Split the work between multiple developers Enable [advanced UIs] without modifications to the core Maximize extensibility See the Introduction wiki page and [Roadmap] for more information. Features Modern GUIs API access from any language including C/C++, C , Clojure, D, Elixir, Go, Haskell, Java/Kotlin, JavaScript/Node.js, Julia, Lisp, Lua, Perl, Python, Racket, Ruby, Rust Embedded, scriptable terminal emulator Asynchronous job control Shared data (shada) among multiple…
read the full Neovim overview →
About Zed
Zed Welcome to Zed, a high performance, multiplayer code editor from the creators of Atom and Tree sitter. Installation On macOS, Linux, and Windows you can download Zed directly or install Zed via your local package manager (macOS/Linux/Windows). Other platforms are not yet available: Web (tracking discussion) Developing Zed Building Zed for macOS Building Zed for Linux Building Zed for Windows Contributing See CONTRIBUTING.md for ways you can contribute to Zed. Also... we're hiring! Check out our jobs page for open roles. Licensing Zed source code is licensed primarily under GPL 3.0 or later, with Apache 2.0…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Neovim or Zed more popular?
Neovim has 103,312 GitHub stars and Zed has 92,568. Neovim has the larger community by that measure.
Are Neovim and Zed free?
Neither Neovim nor Zed declares a licence in this registry, so check each project's own repository before relying on either for a commercial use. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Neovim and Zed?
Neovim is written in Vim Script and Zed 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, Neovim or Zed?
Choose Neovim if you want the larger community (103,312 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Zed if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.