head to head · open source
Zed vs NvChad
Zed has 90,512 GitHub stars, 10,680 forks, 3,159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NvChad has 28,491 stars, 2,219 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Zed leads on adoption by 218% (90,512 vs 28,491 stars). Zed is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0. Zed has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, NvChad 8%. Zed 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 | NvChad | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 28K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-07-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 NvChad if
- You want the NvChad feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and NvChad 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 NvChad
NvChad is a Neovim configuration framework written in Lua that provides a base configuration with polished defaults and a beautiful UI, aimed at developers who want a fast, preconfigured editor without assembling a configuration from scratch.
read the full NvChad overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zed or NvChad more popular?
Zed has 90,512 GitHub stars and NvChad has 28,491. Zed has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zed and NvChad free?
Both are open source. Zed has no licence declared in this registry, and NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Zed and NvChad?
Zed is written in Rust and NvChad 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 NvChad?
Choose Zed if you want the larger community (90,512 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose NvChad if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.