head to head · open source
Zed vs lite-xl
Zed has 90,512 GitHub stars, 10,680 forks, 3,159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lite-xl has 6,387 stars, 317 forks, 330 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Zed leads on adoption by 1,317% (90,512 vs 6,387 stars). Zed is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; lite-xl is written in Lua under MIT. Zed has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, lite-xl 5%. Zed was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (text-editor), 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
| Zed | lite-xl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 6.4K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-03-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 317 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zed if
- You weight community size — 91K 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 lite-xl if
- You want the lite-xl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and lite-xl 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 lite-xl
Lite XL is a lightweight text editor written mostly in Lua and built on SDL2, released under the MIT licence for developers who want a small, fast, extensible editor whose entire source they can read and change.
read the full lite-xl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zed or lite-xl more popular?
Zed has 90,512 GitHub stars and lite-xl has 6,387. Zed has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zed and lite-xl free?
Both are open source. Zed has no licence declared in this registry, and lite-xl is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Zed and lite-xl?
Zed is written in Rust and lite-xl 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, Zed or lite-xl?
Choose Zed if you want the larger community (90,512 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose lite-xl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.