head to head · open source
vscodium vs geany
vscodium has 33,490 GitHub stars, 1,878 forks, 146 open issues and last shipped today. geany has 3,725 stars, 667 forks, 1,281 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. vscodium leads on adoption by 799% (33,490 vs 3,725 stars). vscodium is written in Shell under MIT; geany is written in C under GPL-2.0. vscodium has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, geany 18%. 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 | geany | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | C |
| Last push | 2026-10-03 | 2026-09-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 667 |
| 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 geany if
- You want the geany feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and geany 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 geany
Geany is a small, fast, GPL 2.0 licensed integrated development environment written in C for developers who want IDE features without the weight of a heavy, desktop environment bound toolchain.
read the full geany overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vscodium or geany more popular?
vscodium has 33,490 GitHub stars and geany has 3,725. vscodium has the larger community by that measure.
Are vscodium and geany free?
Both are open source. vscodium is licensed under MIT and geany under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vscodium and geany?
vscodium is written in Shell and geany in C. 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 geany?
Choose vscodium if you want the larger community (33,490 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose geany if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.