head to head · open source
Zed vs Kilo
Zed has 90,427 GitHub stars, 10,659 forks, 3,159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kilo has 27,341 stars, 3,165 forks, 586 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zed leads on adoption by 231% (90,427 vs 27,341 stars). Zed is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; Kilo is written in TypeScript under MIT. Zed has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Kilo 12%. Kilo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Zed | Kilo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 27K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 3.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zed if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Kilo if
- You want the Kilo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Kilo fits your workflow better
About Zed
Zed is a high performance, multiplayer code editor written in Rust, built by the creators of Atom and Tree sitter and aimed at developers who want a native, fast editing surface with AI assistance built in.
About Kilo
Kilo is an open source AI coding agent platform that integrates into VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, the CLI, and cloud environments. It enables developers to build, ship, and iterate faster by acting as an autonomous or semi autonomous coding assistant across their entire workflow. Built in TypeScript and licensed under MIT, it supports 500+ models—including GPT 5.5, Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview—without vendor lock in or markup.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zed or Kilo more popular?
Zed has 90,427 GitHub stars and Kilo has 27,341. Zed has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zed and Kilo free?
Both are open source. Zed has no licence declared in this registry, and Kilo is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Zed and Kilo?
Zed is written in Rust and Kilo 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, Zed or Kilo?
Choose Zed if you want the larger community (90,427 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Kilo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.