Zed alternatives

We tested the top 5 alternatives to Zed hands-on. Here are our picks, ranked by overall quality.

Silver

8.5

/ 10

Cursor

The AI code editor

Free tier $20/mo macos · windows · linux

Silver

8.4

/ 10

Windsurf

Agentic AI IDE built by the Codeium team

Free tier $15/mo macos · windows · linux

Silver

8.3

/ 10

Cline

Open-source autonomous coding agent for VSCode

Free tier macos · windows · linux

Silver

8.0

/ 10

Aider

AI pair programming in your terminal

Free tier macos · windows · linux

Silver

8.0

/ 10

GitHub Copilot

AI pair programmer from GitHub

Free tier $10/mo macos · windows · linux

Last updated: 2026-05-12