head to head · open source
vscodium vs fresh
vscodium has 33,344 GitHub stars, 1,864 forks, 146 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. fresh has 8,996 stars, 342 forks, 369 open issues and last shipped today. vscodium leads on adoption by 271% (33,344 vs 8,996 stars). vscodium is written in Shell under MIT; fresh is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. vscodium has attracted 6% 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.
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Side by side
| vscodium | fresh | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 342 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick vscodium if
- You weight community size — 33K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- 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 vscodium
VSCodium is a repository of scripts that automatically build Microsoft's vscode repository into freely licensed binaries with a community driven default configuration, made for developers who want the Visual Studio Code editing experience without Microsoft branding, telemetry, or licensing encumbrance.
read the full vscodium overview →
About fresh
Fresh is a terminal based IDE and text editor written in Rust and released under the GPL 3.0 licence, aimed at developers who want the familiar editing experience of a graphical editor inside a terminal, with zero configuration required.
read the full fresh overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vscodium or fresh more popular?
vscodium has 33,344 GitHub stars and fresh has 8,996. vscodium has the larger community by that measure.
Are vscodium and fresh free?
Both are open source. vscodium is licensed under MIT and fresh under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vscodium and fresh?
vscodium is written in Shell 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, vscodium or fresh?
Choose vscodium if you want the larger community (33,344 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose fresh if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.