Private and open-source alternatives to Visual Studio Code
9 code editors rated against the same public privacy criteria as Visual Studio Code (VS Code), with our picks first.
Why look for an alternative?
- Open source: partial. The Code - OSS source is MIT, but Microsoft's Visual Studio Code builds add proprietary components under a Microsoft product license.
- No trackers or telemetry: partial. Crash reports, error telemetry and usage data are sent to Microsoft by default and can be turned off with the telemetry.telemetryLevel setting. Extensions may send their own telemetry.
- Independent audit: no. No independent audit is published.
See the full Visual Studio Code rating.
The alternatives
GNU Emacs Grade B
Extensible text editor from the GNU Project, programmable in Emacs Lisp, with packages for code editing, Org mode, email, Git and more.
Based in the United States (Five Eyes). GNU Emacs scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the code editors criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Helix Grade B
Modal terminal text editor written in Rust, inspired by Kakoune, with multiple selections, built-in LSP support and Tree-sitter syntax highlighting.
Helix scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the code editors criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Kate Grade B
Text and code editor from KDE with tabs, split views, LSP support, a built-in terminal and plugins.
Based in Germany (Fourteen Eyes). Kate scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the code editors criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Neovim Grade B
Fork of Vim focused on extensibility, with a Lua plugin API, a built-in LSP client, Tree-sitter support and an embeddable editor core.
Neovim scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the code editors criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Pulsar Grade B
Community-maintained continuation of the Atom editor, hackable through JavaScript packages and themes, with its own package registry.
Pulsar scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the code editors criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
VSCodium Grade B
Community builds of Microsoft's VS Code source under the MIT license, without Microsoft branding and with telemetry turned off. Uses the Open VSX extension registry by default.
VSCodium scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the code editors criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Sublime Text Grade D
Cross-platform text and code editor with multiple selections, a command palette, Git integration and a Python plugin API. Free to evaluate, with a paid license for continued use.
Based in Australia (Five Eyes). Sublime Text scores 50 out of 100 (grade D) on the code editors criteria. It meets 2 of 4 criteria: no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Zed Grade D
Code editor written in Rust with GPU-accelerated rendering, real-time collaboration and built-in AI agent features.
Based in the United States (Five Eyes). Zed scores 50 out of 100 (grade D) on the code editors criteria. It meets 2 of 4 criteria: open source and no ads or data sales.
Vim Grade D
Modal text editor for the terminal and GUI, configurable through Vim script and plugins. Distributed as charityware that asks users to donate to a children's charity in Uganda.
Vim scores 40 out of 100 (grade D) on the code editors criteria. It meets 1 of 4 criteria: open source.