What do Visual Studio Code alternatives cost?

Google Antigravity: Antigravity costs $0 a month for an individual, and the pricing page now labels that tier Generally Available rather than a preview. Prices we have not read ourselves are marked "not verified" in the table above rather than copied from our catalogue, which is out of date on 43 of our 190 rows.

How many Visual Studio Code alternatives do you track?

We name 10 on this page. 1 carry judgments and prices we read and quoted, 3 carry live repository data with no judgment yet, and 6 are catalogue entries we have not researched. We say which is which on every row rather than presenting all of them as reviewed.

Best Visual Studio Code alternatives (2026)

Visual Studio Code is an IDE that runs as a desktop app: Free source-code editor with rich extension ecosystem. We name 10 alternatives below.

Quick answer

Of the 10 alternatives here, 1 have been researched claim by claim. Start with Google Antigravity.

Choose Google Antigravity when: Run Antigravity without leaving Visual Studio Code: Google's own extension puts agent chat, inline diff review and interactive plans into VS Code side panels, and installs a local `agy` backend service the first time you launch it. [antigravity.google/docs/ide]

It costs: Antigravity costs $0 a month for an individual, and the pricing page now labels that tier Generally Available rather than a preview. [antigravity.google/pricing]

How this list is ordered. Tools whose claims we have read and quoted come first, then tools whose repository we track, then catalogue entries we have not researched. Within each band the order is category and workflow overlap. A tool that has stopped is never the first answer. We publish no score out of five: every claim here traces to a source, and a number we could not justify would undermine the ones that can.

Why people leave Visual Studio Code

The app you download is not the MIT repository: Microsoft ships Visual Studio Code as a licensed distribution of the open-source Code - OSS tree, and says the product is built on open source rather than being open source.

“Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a Microsoft licensed distribution of 'Code - OSS' that includes Microsoft proprietary assets (such as icons) and features (Visual Studio Marketplace integration, small aspects of enabling Remote Development). While these additions make up a very small percentage of…”

code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting

The extension library is licensed to Microsoft's own products, so a fork of Code - OSS cannot legally carry Microsoft extensions from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

“No. While the source code for an extension from Microsoft may be open source, we do not license extensions from Microsoft or its affiliates that are published to and acquired from the Visual Studio Marketplace for use outside of the Visual Studio family of products: Microsoft Visual Studio, Visua…”

code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting

The local agent harness still runs unsandboxed for everybody: Microsoft took sandboxing to 50% of users, then set the default rollout back to 0% in the 1.135 release.

“We previously rolled out sandboxing to 50% of users to validate it on a larger scale and in real-world use cases. While we didn't identify a specific blocking issue, continuing the rollout would likely require more support and follow-up work at a time when we want to preserve focus on higher-prio…”

code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_135

A team that needs the agent confined before its first run should pick Codex CLI: in VS Code a Git worktree separates the files and nothing else.

“Worktree isolation does not restrict commands, network access, or access outside the worktree.”

code.visualstudio.com/docs/agents

1 researched alternatives to Visual Studio Code

Google Antigravity

antigravity.google

What it is: Google Antigravity is a platform rather than an editor: its IDE extensions put the same agent — side-panel chat, inline diff review and interactive plans — inside the editor you already use, so adopting Antigravity does not require adopting its IDE. [antigravity.google/docs/ide]

Where it hurts: You cannot point Antigravity at a model key you already hold: the plans page states there is no bring-your-own-key or bring-your-own-endpoint path, so the quota Google grants you is your only supply. [antigravity.google/docs/plans]

Price: Antigravity costs $0 a month for an individual, and the pricing page now labels that tier Generally Available rather than a preview. [antigravity.google/pricing]

Antigravity changes week to week and Google reserves the right to move the limits: 2.11.0 shipped on 2026-08-26 and the IDE extensions on 2026-08-20, so read every quota statement here as read on 2026-08-27.

Website: antigravity.google; HTTP 200; Verified 8 Oct 2026

Compare side by side Full Google Antigravity profile Visit site

Visual Studio Code alternatives at a glance

Tool	Price	State	Newest commit
Google Antigravity	$0	Not tracked	not tracked
Cursor	not verified	Slowing	12 May 2026
Windsurf	not verified	Not tracked	not tracked
Zed	not verified	Active	8 Oct 2026

Also close, not yet researched

These match Visual Studio Code by category and workflow, and we have not read their vendor pages. We publish no judgment and no price for them, because we have no source to put beside one.

CursorSlowingAI-powered IDE designed to replace VS Code with predictive editing and project contextRepository tracked
WindsurfAgentic IDE where developers and AI flow together (formerly Codeium)Website checked
ZedHigh-performance code editor designed for collaboration with humans and AIRepository tracked
Amazon KiroAI IDE from AWS for prototype to productionCatalogue entry
OrchidsAI-powered IDE and full-stack app builder (YC W25) that generates production-ready web, mobile, and desktop apps from natural language conversations with support for React, Next.js, Python, Swift, Flutter and built-in deploymentCatalogue entry
Firebase StudioGoogle's agentic cloud-based dev environment for full-stack AI appsCatalogue entry
Repo PromptRepository-wide code generation and editing via AI promptsCatalogue entry
OpenClawFree personal AI assistant running locallyCatalogue entry
Wispr FlowAI dictation app for speech-to-text codingCatalogue entry

Questions people ask

What is the best alternative to Visual Studio Code?: Google Antigravity is the one we can answer for in full. Run Antigravity without leaving Visual Studio Code: Google's own extension puts agent chat, inline diff review and interactive plans into VS Code side panels, and installs a local `agy` backend service the first time you launch it. Antigravity costs $0 a month for an individual, and the pricing page now labels that tier Generally Available rather than a preview. Every part of that answer is quoted from a page we read; the links are on this page beside each claim.
What do Visual Studio Code alternatives cost?: Google Antigravity: Antigravity costs $0 a month for an individual, and the pricing page now labels that tier Generally Available rather than a preview. Prices we have not read ourselves are marked "not verified" in the table above rather than copied from our catalogue, which is out of date on 43 of our 190 rows.
How many Visual Studio Code alternatives do you track?: We name 10 on this page. 1 carry judgments and prices we read and quoted, 3 carry live repository data with no judgment yet, and 6 are catalogue entries we have not researched. We say which is which on every row rather than presenting all of them as reviewed.

How we check this page

Stars, licences, the newest commit on each default branch and the latest stable release are read from the GitHub API, and each one shows the day it was last confirmed rather than the day this page was built. Every judgment and every price is quoted from a page we read, and that page is linked beside the claim. Where a link is missing we wrote no claim. We have researched 1 of the 10 tools named here.