head to head · open source
Zed vs vscodium
Zed has 90,512 GitHub stars, 10,680 forks, 3,159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vscodium has 33,291 stars, 1,866 forks, 146 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Zed leads on adoption by 172% (90,512 vs 33,291 stars). Zed is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; vscodium is written in Shell under MIT. Zed has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, vscodium 6%. 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 | vscodium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 33K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| 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 vscodium if
- You want the vscodium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and vscodium 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 vscodium
VSCodium is a repository of scripts that automatically build Microsoft's vscode repository into freely licensed binaries with a community driven default configuration, made for developers who want the Visual Studio Code editing experience without Microsoft branding, telemetry, or licensing encumbrance.
read the full vscodium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zed or vscodium more popular?
Zed has 90,512 GitHub stars and vscodium has 33,291. Zed has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zed and vscodium free?
Both are open source. Zed has no licence declared in this registry, and vscodium is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Zed and vscodium?
Zed is written in Rust and vscodium in Shell. 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 vscodium?
Choose Zed if you want the larger community (90,512 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose vscodium if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.