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Zed

open source / Overall score: 4.7(leading)

High-performance multiplayer code editor written in Rust by the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter, built for human-AI collaboration. It offers agentic editing, parallel agents across projects, an inline assistant and its own open-weight edit-prediction model, and plugs in external agents over the Agent Client Protocol alongside MCP servers. Models run on the user's own key or on Zed's hosting.

Openness

5 high confidence

5.0

license: GPL-3.0-or-later(editor)+GPL-3.0-or-later(collab-server, crates/collab/LICENSE-GPL)+Apache-2.0(GPUI)
source: public
commercial: Zed-Pro/Business(hosted AI)
core features withheld: no — the whole editor and the collab server are in the repo under GPL/Apache

Zed's editor, collaboration server and GPUI toolkit are all published under GPL-3.0-or-later or Apache-2.0, with no separate enterprise directory anywhere in the repository. Personal use is free and unlimited with external API keys; the paid Pro and Business tiers sell Zed-hosted model inference and an admin dashboard, not any part of the editor.

https://api.github.com/repos/zed-industries/zed/git/trees/main?recursive=1 recorded 2026-08-11
Full untruncated recursive tree, 5,130 entries. Root LICENSE-GPL and LICENSE-APACHE; every crate under crates/ carries one or the other, including crates/collab/LICENSE-GPL (the collaboration server) and crates/gpui/LICENSE-APACHE. Zero paths containing AGPL. No enterprise/, ee/, commercial/ or proprietary/ path.
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed recorded 2026-06-18
Rust, ~85k stars, GPL/AGPL/Apache licensing
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zed-industries/zed/main/crates/collab/Cargo.toml recorded 2026-09-29
The collab server crate manifest in the public repo lists "GPL-3.0-or-later" as its license, beside "edition.workspace = true", so the server is GPL too.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zed-industries/zed/main/LICENSE-APACHE recorded 2026-09-29
Root LICENSE-APACHE is the Apache License text, starting "Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License")". Searched for AGPL in the README and GPL text: none.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zed-industries/zed/main/LICENSE-GPL recorded 2026-09-29
Root LICENSE-GPL carries the full GPL-3.0 text headed "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE".
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zed-industries/zed/main/README.md recorded 2026-09-29
The README says "Zed source code is licensed primarily under GPL-3.0-or-later, with Apache-2.0 components where marked" and links "Building Zed for Linux" build instructions for the public source tree.
https://zed.dev/pricing recorded 2026-09-29
The pricing FAQ says "Since Zed is open source, these controls govern Zed's hosted services specifically" and the free tier gives "Unlimited use with your API keys or external agents like Claude Agent, Codex CLI, and more".

Adoption

4 medium confidence

4.0

A widely-used released editor with paid Pro/Business tiers, but no public install count.

https://zed.dev/pricing recorded 2026-10-08
Personal $0 forever, Pro $10 per month, Business per seat; released product with direct download and no install, download or user count published

Capability

5 high confidence

5.0

Full AI-editor feature set on par with Cursor/Windsurf, model-agnostic.

https://zed.dev recorded 2026-09-29
The homepage says "Zed natively supports agentic editing, enabling fluent collaboration between humans and AI", "Run multiple threads of your favorite agents across several projects so you never leave your flow", and "Powered by Zeta2, our open-weight language model".
https://zed.dev recorded 2026-09-29
The homepage says "Bring agents like Claude Agent, Codex, or OpenCode via ACP" and "Connect MCP servers for extending the agent", and lists an "Inline Assistant".

Verified 2026-09-29