Zed makes a claim that almost no software makes anymore: it's actually faster. Not subjectively snappier, not fast for a tool with these features: measurably, provably faster than the competition. Half-second cold start. 120 frames per second scrolling. Large files that don't stutter. Two and a half times lower power draw than VS Code. The team built a custom GPU rendering framework in Rust called GPUI specifically to achieve this, and then built the editor on top of it.
This matters less than you might think for most tasks and more than you might think for specific ones. Searching a large codebase, opening a file with 10,000 lines, using the editor on battery: these are the places where the speed difference actually shows up. If your entire working day is in the editor, the cumulative effect of that speed is real. If you spend most of your time in a browser tab or switching between tools, the difference is academic.
The native multiplayer is the other differentiating feature, and it was there before the AI features arrived. Two or more developers in the same file simultaneously, seeing each other's cursors, as a first-class built-in capability rather than a plugin or a workaround. This is the kind of thing that's hard to retrofit into an existing architecture and easy to build when it's in the foundation. VS Code's live share exists, but Zed's feels like the native experience that one is approximating.
The AI layer is current and thoughtful rather than maximal. The Agent Panel handles autonomous background tasks with confirmation gates; it does work, then shows you what it did before proceeding. Zed's open-source Zeta model handles edit prediction for autocomplete. Bring your own key for Claude, GPT, Gemini, or run Ollama locally for fully offline AI. Conversations aren't stored server-side by default. The privacy posture is different from most AI coding tools, which is worth noting for anyone with sensitive codebases.
The extension library is much smaller than VS Code's. This is the main friction for switching. If you rely on specific language servers, debuggers, formatters, or integrations that exist only as VS Code extensions, Zed may not cover them yet. The r/zed_editor community documents what's available and what's missing more accurately than the official docs. Worth checking your specific stack before committing.
Windows support arrived in late 2025, making Zed available on all three major platforms. Version 1.0 is targeted for Spring 2026, which is a useful signal about where the team considers the product in its maturity curve.
At free for the core editor, with a Pro plan around $10 per month for hosted AI models and local model usage remaining free, Zed is aggressively priced. The open-source GPL license means you can inspect exactly what you're running.
Who Zed is for: performance-obsessed developers for whom every millisecond matters, remote pair programming teams who want multiplayer as infrastructure rather than a plugin, systems engineers in Rust or Go or C++ where the performance benefits compound, and anyone running Ollama locally who wants an AI coding environment that respects that choice.
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Zed makes a claim that almost no software makes anymore: it's actually faster. Not subjectively snappier, not fast for a tool with these features: measurably, provably faster than the competition. Half-second cold start. 120 frames per second scrolling. Large files that don't stutter. Two and a half times lower power draw than VS Code. The team built a custom GPU rendering framework in Rust called GPUI specifically to achieve this, and then built the editor on top of it.
This matters less than you might think for most tasks and more than you might think for specific ones. Searching a large codebase, opening a file with 10,000 lines, using the editor on battery: these are the places where the speed difference actually shows up. If your entire working day is in the editor, the cumulative effect of that speed is real. If you spend most of your time in a browser tab or switching between tools, the difference is academic.
The native multiplayer is the other differentiating feature, and it was there before the AI features arrived. Two or more developers in the same file simultaneously, seeing each other's cursors, as a first-class built-in capability rather than a plugin or a workaround. This is the kind of thing that's hard to retrofit into an existing architecture and easy to build when it's in the foundation. VS Code's live share exists, but Zed's feels like the native experience that one is approximating.
The AI layer is current and thoughtful rather than maximal. The Agent Panel handles autonomous background tasks with confirmation gates; it does work, then shows you what it did before proceeding. Zed's open-source Zeta model handles edit prediction for autocomplete. Bring your own key for Claude, GPT, Gemini, or run Ollama locally for fully offline AI. Conversations aren't stored server-side by default. The privacy posture is different from most AI coding tools, which is worth noting for anyone with sensitive codebases.
The extension library is much smaller than VS Code's. This is the main friction for switching. If you rely on specific language servers, debuggers, formatters, or integrations that exist only as VS Code extensions, Zed may not cover them yet. The r/zed_editor community documents what's available and what's missing more accurately than the official docs. Worth checking your specific stack before committing.
Windows support arrived in late 2025, making Zed available on all three major platforms. Version 1.0 is targeted for Spring 2026, which is a useful signal about where the team considers the product in its maturity curve.
At free for the core editor, with a Pro plan around $10 per month for hosted AI models and local model usage remaining free, Zed is aggressively priced. The open-source GPL license means you can inspect exactly what you're running.
Who Zed is for: performance-obsessed developers for whom every millisecond matters, remote pair programming teams who want multiplayer as infrastructure rather than a plugin, systems engineers in Rust or Go or C++ where the performance benefits compound, and anyone running Ollama locally who wants an AI coding environment that respects that choice.