head to head · open source
vscodium vs zasper
vscodium has 33,536 GitHub stars, 1,881 forks, 146 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zasper has 2,354 stars, 79 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. vscodium leads on adoption by 1,325% (33,536 vs 2,354 stars). vscodium is written in Shell under MIT; zasper is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. vscodium has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, zasper 3%. 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 | zasper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Shell | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 79 |
| 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 zasper if
- You want the zasper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and zasper 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 zasper
Zasper is a high performance, self hosted IDE for Jupyter notebooks that runs any Jupyter kernel from a single static binary, aimed at data scientists and teams who want JupyterLab's workflow without its resource footprint.
read the full zasper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vscodium or zasper more popular?
vscodium has 33,536 GitHub stars and zasper has 2,354. vscodium has the larger community by that measure.
Are vscodium and zasper free?
Both are open source. vscodium is licensed under MIT and zasper under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vscodium and zasper?
vscodium is written in Shell and zasper in TypeScript. 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 zasper?
Choose vscodium if you want the larger community (33,536 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose zasper if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.