Code editor privacy ratings
Editors and IDEs without telemetry.
12 code editors are rated against 4 public criteria, and 12 have enough evidence for a letter grade. Of the 7 with a known jurisdiction, 5 are based in a Five Eyes country, and 6 in the wider Fourteen Eyes.
Open-source code editors only · Criteria for this category · Suggest an addition · Markdown
| Name | Grade | Score | Data | Jurisdiction | Open source | No trackers or telemetry | No ads or data sales | Independent audit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Extensible text editor from the GNU Project, programmable in Emacs Lisp, with packages for code editing, Org mode, email, Git and more. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Modal terminal text editor written in Rust, inspired by Kakoune, with multiple selections, built-in LSP support and Tree-sitter syntax highlighting. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Text and code editor from KDE with tabs, split views, LSP support, a built-in terminal and plugins. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | Germany Fourteen Eyes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Fork of Vim focused on extensibility, with a Lua plugin API, a built-in LSP client, Tree-sitter support and an embeddable editor core. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Community-maintained continuation of the Atom editor, hackable through JavaScript packages and themes, with its own package registry. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
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. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
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. |
Grade D | 50 | 100% | Australia Five Eyes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
Microsoft's code editor with built-in Git support, debugging, AI features and an extension marketplace. Built from the MIT-licensed Code - OSS repository, with Microsoft branding and proprietary components. |
Grade D | 50 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | Partial | Partial | Yes | No |
Code editor written in Rust with GPU-accelerated rendering, real-time collaboration and built-in AI agent features. |
Grade D | 50 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
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. |
Grade D | 40 | 100% | – | Yes | No | Partial | No |
AI code editor from Anysphere, built on a fork of VS Code, with AI chat, code completion and coding agents. |
Grade F | 30 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | Yes | Partial |
IDE from JetBrains for Java, Kotlin and other JVM languages, with code analysis, refactoring, debugging and AI features. Some features require a paid subscription. |
Grade F | 25 | 100% | Czechia Outside Eyes | Partial | No | Partial | No |
Questions
What is the most private option among code editors?
No pick has been made yet. The table above is sorted by score, based on public evidence.
How are code editors rated?
Each entry answers 4 questions: open source, no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales and independent audit. Answers need links to evidence. See the full criteria.
Does jurisdiction matter?
Jurisdiction decides which laws can compel a provider to hand over data. Each entry shows its country and whether it is in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes. The data a provider can hand over depends mostly on what it stores and who holds the keys. Read about jurisdictions and the CLOUD Act.