Visual Studio Code vs Zed
Visual Studio Code is an AI-native IDE by Microsoft. Zed is an AI-native IDE by Zed Industries. Every cell below is read from the directory data and points back to a vendor page.
 Visual Studio Code |  Zed | |
|---|---|---|
| General | ||
| Layer | AI-native IDE | AI-native IDE |
| Vendor | Microsoft | Zed Industries |
| Platforms | macOS, Windows, Linux, Web | macOS, Linux, Windows |
| License | MIT Open source | GPL-3.0-or-later AND AGPL-3.0-or-later AND Apache-2.0 Open source |
| Status | active | active |
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry price | Free | Free |
| Top individual plan | Free | $10/mo |
| Team seat | — | $30/user/mo |
| Included usage | — | $5/mo Pro |
| Beyond the plan | — | Blocked, API list price +10% |
| Part of a plan | — | — |
| Models | ||
| Providers | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Moonshot | Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Vercel AI Gateway |
| Bring your own key | Partial BYOK | BYOK |
| Local models | Yes | Yes |
| Features | ||
| Git worktrees | Yes | No |
| Parallel agents | Yes | No |
| Subagents | Yes | Yes |
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| ACP client | No | Yes |
| Browser automation | Yes | No |
| Sandboxing | Yes | No |
| Remote execution | Yes | Yes |
| Diff review | Yes | Yes |
| Checkpoints | Yes | No |
| Plugins | Yes | No |
| Hooks | Yes | No |
| Tab completion | Yes | Yes |
| Works with | ||
| Runs | GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Codex CLI | Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI |
| Runs inside | — | — |
| Pricing verified | 2026-08-23 | 2026-08-23 |