head to head · open source
vscodium vs NvChad
vscodium has 33,935 GitHub stars, 1,920 forks, 146 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. NvChad has 28,530 stars, 2,212 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. vscodium leads on adoption by 19% (33,935 vs 28,530 stars). vscodium is written in Shell under MIT; NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0. vscodium has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, NvChad 8%. vscodium 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.
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Side by side
| vscodium | NvChad | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 29K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-10-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick vscodium if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick NvChad if
- You want the NvChad feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and NvChad fits your workflow better
About vscodium
VSCodium Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of Visual Studio Code This is not a fork. This is a repository of scripts to automatically build Microsoft's vscode repository into freely licensed binaries with a community driven default configuration. Table of Contents Download/Install Install with Brew Install with Windows Package Manager (WinGet) Install with Chocolatey Install with Scoop Install with snap Install with Package Manager Install on Arch Linux Flatpak Option Build Why Does This Exist More Info Supported Platforms Previously Supported Platforms Download/Install :tada: :tada: Download latest…
read the full vscodium overview →
About NvChad
NvChad Home • Install • Contribute • Support • Features Showcase What is it? NvChad is a neovim config written in lua aiming to provide a base configuration with very beautiful UI and blazing fast startuptime (around 0.02 secs 0.07 secs). We tweak UI plugins such as telescope, nvim tree etc well to provide an aesthetic UI experience. Lazy loading is done 93% of the time meaning that plugins will not be loaded by default, they will be loaded only when required also at specific commands, events etc. This lowers the startuptime and it was like 0.07 secs tested on an old pentium machine 1.4ghz + 4gb ram & HDD…
read the full NvChad overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vscodium or NvChad more popular?
vscodium has 33,935 GitHub stars and NvChad has 28,530. vscodium has the larger community by that measure.
Are vscodium and NvChad free?
Both are open source. vscodium is licensed under MIT and NvChad under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vscodium and NvChad?
vscodium is written in Shell and NvChad in Lua. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, vscodium or NvChad?
Choose vscodium if you want the larger community (33,935 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose NvChad if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.