head to head · open source
Zed vs spyder
Zed has 90,736 GitHub stars, 10,730 forks, 3,159 open issues and last shipped today. spyder has 9,337 stars, 1,803 forks, 1,353 open issues and last shipped today. Zed leads on adoption by 872% (90,736 vs 9,337 stars). Zed is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; spyder is written in Python under MIT. Zed has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, spyder 19%. 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 | spyder | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| 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 spyder if
- You want the spyder feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and spyder 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 spyder
Spyder is a free, MIT licensed development environment for scientific Python, a desktop IDE built in Python on the Qt toolkit, intended for scientists, engineers, analysts and students who write and run Python code.
read the full spyder overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zed or spyder more popular?
Zed has 90,736 GitHub stars and spyder has 9,337. Zed has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zed and spyder free?
Both are open source. Zed has no licence declared in this registry, and spyder is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Zed and spyder?
Zed is written in Rust and spyder in Python. 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 spyder?
Choose Zed if you want the larger community (90,736 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose spyder if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.