head to head · open source
Zed vs sidex
Zed has 90,530 GitHub stars, 10,686 forks, 3,159 open issues and last shipped today. sidex has 2,954 stars, 238 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 24 days ago. Zed leads on adoption by 2,965% (90,530 vs 2,954 stars). Zed is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; sidex is written in TypeScript under MIT. Zed has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, sidex 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 | sidex | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-08-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 238 |
| 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 sidex if
- You want the sidex feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sidex 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 sidex
SideX is a port of Visual Studio Code that replaces Electron with Tauri — a Rust backend running against the operating system's native webview — for developers who want the VS Code workbench, editor, terminal and Git tooling without the bundled browser that normally comes with them.
read the full sidex overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zed or sidex more popular?
Zed has 90,530 GitHub stars and sidex has 2,954. Zed has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zed and sidex free?
Both are open source. Zed has no licence declared in this registry, and sidex is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Zed and sidex?
Zed is written in Rust and sidex 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 sidex?
Choose Zed if you want the larger community (90,530 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose sidex if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.