Best Code Editors for Windows
View:
Compare the Top Code Editors for Windows as of October 2025
Sort By:
What are Code Editors for Windows?
Code editors are software tools that allow developers to write, edit, and debug source code for programming and web development. These editors provide essential features like syntax highlighting, code completion, auto-indentation, and error detection to enhance productivity and reduce coding errors. Many code editors also offer integrations with version control systems (like Git), debuggers, and build tools, allowing developers to manage their code and workflows efficiently. While some code editors are lightweight and focused solely on text editing, others offer extensive features and customization options through plugins and extensions. By providing a streamlined environment for coding, code editors are essential for software development, web development, and scripting tasks. Compare and read user reviews of the best Code Editors for Windows currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
-
1
Windsurf Editor
Windsurf
The Windsurf Editor is a free AI-powered IDE and AI coding assistant that accelerates development by providing intelligent code generation and agents in over 70 programming languages and more than 40 IDEs, including VSCode, JetBrains, and Jupyter Notebooks. With Windsurf, developers can write code faster, eliminate repetitive tasks, and stay in the flow state—whether they're working with Python, JavaScript, C++, or any other language. Built on billions of lines of open-source code, Windsurf Editor understands and anticipates your coding needs, offering multiline suggestions, automated unit tests, and even natural language explanations for complex functions. It’s perfect for streamlining code writing, reducing boilerplate, and cutting down the time spent on documentation searches. Trusted by individual developers and Fortune 500 companies alike, Windsurf Editor is your go-to solution for boosting productivity and writing better code. Try Windsurf for free today!Starting Price: Free -
2
Visual Studio Code
Microsoft
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is Microsoft’s open-source AI code editor designed to make coding faster, smarter, and more collaborative. It supports thousands of extensions and nearly every programming language, offering developers a lightweight yet powerful environment for writing, testing, and debugging code. With AI-powered features like GitHub Copilot, Next Edit Suggestions, and Agent Mode, VS Code helps you code with precision, automate complex tasks, and streamline development workflows. It integrates seamlessly with cloud services, remote repositories, and tools like Git, Docker, and Azure. The editor is fully customizable, allowing you to personalize your layout, color themes, and keyboard shortcuts. Whether coding locally or in the browser, VS Code delivers a complete development experience for individuals and teams alike.Starting Price: Free -
3
IntelliJ IDEA
JetBrains
IntelliJ IDEA is a professional-grade integrated development environment (IDE) primarily designed for Java and Kotlin development. It helps developers write code faster by automating routine tasks and providing smart coding assistance. The IDE supports the full software development lifecycle, from design and coding to testing and deployment. IntelliJ IDEA stays up to date with the latest language features, such as full support for Java 24 and Kotlin K2 mode. It offers a smooth and enjoyable workflow that helps developers stay focused and productive. The platform also emphasizes data privacy and security, complying with industry standards like SOC 2.Starting Price: $19.90 per user per month -
4
Apache NetBeans
Apache Software Foundation
Apache NetBeans is a versatile, open-source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) used for developing applications across a wide range of programming languages, including Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML5, and C/C++. Known for its modular architecture, NetBeans provides robust tools and features that cater to the needs of developers working on desktop, mobile, and web applications. It includes intelligent code editing, debugging, and profiling capabilities, along with a built-in visual GUI builder for designing Java-based user interfaces. NetBeans also offers support for version control systems like Git, SVN, and Mercurial, facilitating seamless team collaboration. As an Apache Software Foundation project, NetBeans benefits from an active community that continuously improves and expands its functionality, making it a reliable and flexible choice for developers across various domains.Starting Price: Free -
5
Atom
GitHub
Atom is a hackable text editor for the 21st century, built on Electron, and based on everything we love about our favorite editors. We designed it to be deeply customizable, but still approachable using the default configuration. A text editor is at the core of a developer’s toolbox, but it doesn't usually work alone. Work with Git and GitHub directly from Atom with the GitHub package. Create new branches, stage and commit, push and pull, resolve merge conflicts, view pull requests and more—all from within your editor. The GitHub package is already bundled with Atom, so you're ready to go! Atom works across operating systems. Use it on OS X, Windows, or Linux. Search for and install new packages or create your own right from Atom. Atom helps you write code faster with a smart and flexible autocomplete. Easily browse and open a single file, a whole project, or multiple projects in one window.Starting Price: Free -
6
Visual Studio
Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio is the industry-leading integrated development environment (IDE) for building modern applications across desktop, mobile, cloud, and web. It empowers developers to write, refactor, debug, test, and deploy software faster with intelligent assistance powered by GitHub Copilot and AI-driven workflows. With Agent Mode, developers can automate repetitive coding tasks, optimize performance, and receive contextual help directly in the IDE. The suite includes Visual Studio 2022, the comprehensive IDE for .NET and C++ development on Windows, and Visual Studio Code, the lightweight, cross-platform editor supporting JavaScript, Python, and dozens of other languages. Visual Studio integrates seamlessly with Azure, GitHub, and CI/CD pipelines, enabling teams to collaborate and ship code efficiently. Trusted by millions worldwide, Visual Studio provides the tools and intelligence developers need to build reliable, scalable, and secure applications from concept to release.Starting Price: $45/user/month -
7
Cursor
Anysphere
The AI-first Code Editor. Cursor is a next-generation AI-powered code editor designed to accelerate software development with powerful, real-time code assistance. The platform integrates seamlessly with your development workflow, offering advanced features such as natural language code editing, auto-completion, and context-aware suggestions. Cursor predicts your next move and adapts to your coding style, making it an indispensable tool for developers. It also supports a wide range of extensions and themes, ensuring familiarity while introducing cutting-edge AI capabilities. Designed to boost productivity, Cursor simplifies debugging and enhances coding efficiency, empowering developers to work smarter, not harder.Starting Price: $20 per month -
8
Komodo IDE
ActiveState Software
Code faster with the IDE for today’s web languages – Python, PHP, Perl, Golang, Ruby and more. -
9
Brackets
Brackets
With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, Brackets is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser. It's crafted from the ground up for web designers and front-end developers. Brackets is a lightweight, yet powerful, modern text editor. We blend visual tools into the editor so you get the right amount of help when you want it without getting in the way of your creative process. You'll enjoy writing code in Brackets. Brackets is an open-source project, supported by an active and passionate community. It's made by other web developers like you! Instead of jumping between file tabs, Brackets lets you open a window into the code you care about most. Want to work on the CSS that applies to a specific ID? Put your mouse cursor on that ID, push Command / Ctrl+E and Brackets will show you all the CSS selectors with that ID in an inline window so you can work on your code side-by-side without any popups. -
10
Geany
Geany
Geany is a powerful, stable and lightweight programmer's text editor that provides tons of useful features without bogging down your workflow. It runs on Linux, Windows and MacOS is translated into over 40 languages, and has built-in support for more than 50 programming languages. One the primary reasons for Geany's existence is that there is a need for a decent, GUI, lightweight, cross-platform, flexible and powerful IDE/editor. Many editors meet one or more of these requirements but fall short on others. Using the GPL v2 license, Geany assures that not only can you customize and hack it, but that everyone benefits from changes the community makes. Many parts of Geany are heavily customizable like color themes (Geany Themes) or adding new filetypes. Furthermore, Geany provides many settings to let you adjust it to your needs and preferences. Many supported filetypes including popular programming languages like C, Java, PHP, HTML, JavaScript, etc. -
11
Kate
KDE
Kate is packed with features that will make it easier for you to view and edit all your text files. Kate lets you to edit and view many files at the same time, both in tabs and split views, and comes with a wide variety of plugins, including an embedded terminal that lets you launch console commands directly from Kate, powerful search and replace plugins, and a preview plugin that can show you what your MD, HTML and even SVG will look like. Kate supports highlighting for over 300 languages making it easier to read code in almost all programming languages. Kate also understands how brackets works and will help you navigate inside complex code blocks hierarchies. On-the-fly spellchecking is also included and will help you check your text before publishing. Work on multiple files at the same time with split views. Use the project sidebar to navigate your project directory structures and use Kate's smart tabs to quickly access your recently opened documents. -
12
UltraEdit
IDM Computer Solutions
For almost 3 decades, UltraEdit has been the go-to text editor for 2+ million users and many Fortune 100/500/1000 enterprise customers. Renowned for its power and performance in handling and processing huge files and data, UltraEdit is also a highly configurable and fully themed code editor with support for nearly any source language or syntax. Often called the "Swiss army knife" of text editors, UltraEdit is a powerful tool for users in a wide range of responsibilities and industries. From programming and project management to large file manipulation, from data sorting and column/block editing to remote (FTP/SFTP) file operations, from advanced file searching and text data reformatting, there's almost no problem that UltraEdit can't solve in the world of text editing. UltraEdit is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and is supported by a professional development team and customer service staff located in the USA. -
13
Code Browser
Code Browser
Code Browser is a folding text editor for Linux and Windows, designed to hierarchically structure any kind of text file and especially source code. It makes navigation through source code faster and easier. Code Browser is especially designed to keep a good overview of the code of large projects, but is also useful for a simple CSS file. Ideal if you are fed up of having to scroll through thousands of lines of code. It supports syntax highlighting for all major languages and custom syntax highlighting can also be added. Although Code Browser was initially designed to edit programs, it can also be used for different tasks such as plain text outlining or helping to understand existing source code. I've added a page with suggestions to take advantage of folding. -
14
BlueGriffon
Disruptive Innovations
The next-gen Web and EPUB Editor based on the rendering engine of Firefox. BlueGriffon® has a long list of famous ancestors and proudly inherits from all of them: Netscape®, Mozilla® Composer and Nvu. It is powered by Gecko, the same rendering engine you can find at the heart of Firefox®, and is filled with tons of powerful features. BlueGriffon® is used by millions of users around the world, including Universities, Governments and even the European Parliament. It is officially recommended by the French Government as the Web Authoring Tool for the French Administration in its effort to rely on and promote Free Software. BlueGriffon® is used by millions of users around the world, including Universities, Governments and even the European Parliament. It is officially recommended by the French Government as the Web Authoring Tool for the French Administration in its effort to rely on and promote Free Software.Starting Price: $87.75 one-time payment -
15
Zed
Zed Industries
Zed is a next-generation code editor designed for high-performance collaboration with humans and AI. Written from scratch in Rust to efficiently leverage multiple CPU cores and your GPU. Integrate upcoming LLMs into your workflow to generate, transform, and analyze code. Chat with teammates, write notes together, and share your screen and project. Multibuffers compose excerpts from across the codebase in one editable surface. Evaluate code inline via Jupyter runtimes and collaboratively edit notebooks. Support for many languages via Tree-sitter, WebAssembly, and the Language Server Protocol. Fast native terminal tightly integrates with Zed's language-aware task runner and AI capabilities. First-class modal editing via Vim bindings, including features like text objects and marks. Zed is built by a global community of thousands of developers. Boost your Zed experience by choosing from hundreds of extensions that broaden language support, offer different themes, and more.Starting Price: Free -
16
Lapce
Lapdev
Lapce is a cutting-edge, open-source code editor focused on delivering a fast and responsive experience, particularly for developers working with large projects or complex codebases. Written in Rust, Lapce leverages the performance advantages of native development to provide a smooth editing experience with minimal lag. It features a clean, modern interface and advanced functionality such as multi-caret editing, split views, and integrated terminal support. With built-in support for the Language Server Protocol (LSP), Lapce offers precise autocompletion, syntax highlighting, and code navigation across various programming languages, enhancing productivity. Its extensibility, support for plugins, and focus on performance make Lapce ideal for developers looking for a lightweight yet powerful editor that balances simplicity with capability, appealing to both beginners and seasoned professionals.Starting Price: Free -
17
Boost Note
Boost Note
Boost Note is a powerful, lightspeed collaborative workspace for developer teams. Built to empower developers productivity with the most solid note taking experience for developers. Not just a GitHub flavored markdown. Put diagrams with Charts.js, Mermaid, and PlantUML in documents to maximize visibility. Choose from keymaps like Vim, over 150 themes, and more to create your own Markdown editor. Manage your documents programmatically. Grab an authentication token and access Boost Note's APIs via simple HTTP requests. Automate your documentation work with over 2,000 external tool integrations via Zapier. Collaborate with your colleagues and share information your way. Have all your teams in one shared workspace. Write documents as a team with Boost Note's realtime editing. Check revision history of a doc. You can easily roll back to one of the previous versions in one click. Keep your important data safe through granula access control based on workspace.Starting Price: $3 per member per month -
18
Pinegrow
Pinegrow
Pinegrow is a Mac, Windows and Linux web editor that lets you build responsive websites faster with live multi-page editing, CSS & SASS styling, CSS Grid editor and support for Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, Foundation and WordPress. Pinegrow is a desktop website builder that opens and saves standard HTML and CSS files. That means you won’t be locked into a proprietary file format. Just open and edit your existing projects. Use Pinegrow alongside other web development tools. Build websites offline, without internet connection. Create as many websites as you want. Quickly build the layout of your webpage with powerful visual tools for adding, editing, moving, cloning and deleting HTML elements. Insert multiple elements with repeater and modify the layout of all selected elements with one move. Inspect active CSS rules, use rich visual controls, CSS Grid editor, Dev tools-like editor or code - all working together as one. Edit SASS and LESS, live, without any external tools.Starting Price: $6 per month -
19
UEStudio
UltraEdit
UEStudio is built upon the world's best text editor, UltraEdit, and delivers additional features for teams and developers – like deep Git integration. You can clone, checkout, update, commit, push/pull, and more directly from within UEStudio to manage your Git repositories. As a Git editor, UEStudio combines the world's best text editor and the power of Git all within a single application. Edit and update your source files, then commit them with the stroke of a hotkey or the click of a mouse. You can easily merge branches in UEStudio's Git branch manager (or in the Git shell if that's your style). Quickly review and resolve them with UltraCompare's merge tool support so you can be on your way. UEStudio parses your project and source files to provide you with intelligent, automatic source code completion.Starting Price: $89.95 per year -
20
PearAI
PearAI
Ask questions or generate code with the context of your codebase for accurate results. This also works with choosing specific folders, online docs, terminal content, files, and more. PearAI can directly code in your files, and allow you to see diffs. Try CMD+I (CTRL+I on Windows). Here, we ask PearAI to help us add error handling and comments. Without writing a single line of code, we were able to make a new feature in an unfamiliar codebase: adding a documentation page to the PearAI landing page. Speed up your development process by seamlessly integrating AI into your workflow. PearAI's goal is to reduce the time it takes for an individual to go from idea to creation. Coding itself is a crucial tool in product development, and we believe that with the advancement of AI, it may drastically change over the coming years. We aim to build the environment that will encompass these changes, both in the short-term and long-term.Starting Price: $15 per month -
21
Code::Blocks
Code::Blocks
Code::Blocks is a free, open-source, cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE) primarily designed for C, C++, and Fortran development. Known for its lightweight design and modular structure, Code::Blocks offers a highly customizable interface with support for multiple compilers, including GCC, Clang, and Microsoft Visual C++. It features an intuitive, user-friendly interface with essential tools like syntax highlighting, code folding, auto-completion, and a robust debugging environment with breakpoints, variable inspection, and call stack tracing. Code::Blocks is highly extensible through plugins, enabling developers to add features like version control, scripting support, and custom build tools. Its lightweight nature, flexibility, and cross-platform compatibility make it a popular choice for students, educators, and developers working on small to medium-sized C/C++ projects.Starting Price: Free -
22
Void Editor
Void Editor
Void is an open source AI code editor and Cursor alternative built as a fork of VS Code, enabling developers to write code with advanced AI assistance while retaining full control over their data. It supports seamless integration with any large language model, such as DeepSeek, Llama, Qwen, Gemini, Claude, and Grok, connecting directly without routing through a private backend. Core features include tab‑triggered autocomplete, inline quick edit, and a versatile AI chat interface offering normal chat, a restricted gather mode for read/search-only tasks, and an agent mode that automates file and folder operations, terminal commands, and MCP tool access. Void delivers high‑performance operations, including fast apply on files with thousands of lines, alongside checkpoint management for model updates, native tool execution, and lint error detection. Developers can transfer all themes, keybindings, and settings from VS Code in one click and host models locally or via the cloud.Starting Price: Free -
23
Eclipse Theia
Eclipse Foundation
Eclipse Theia is an extensible platform to develop multi-language Cloud & Desktop IDEs with state-of-the-art web technologies. Not sure whether you need a web or desktop version or both? With Theia you can develop one IDE and run it in browsers or native desktop application from a single source. The Theia project is hosted at the Eclipse Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation, and is developed by a diverse community. Unlike other "open-source" projects, projects hosted at an Open-Source Foundation are protected against single-vendor decisions against the interest of the diverse community. Theia is designed in a modular way to allow extenders and adopters customizing and extending every aspect of it. Composing a custom IDE-like product is as easy as listing all needed extensions in a package.json file. Adding new functionality by implementing your own extensions is easy, too and provides all the flexibility you need.Starting Price: $0 -
24
VSCodium
VSCodium
Microsoft’s vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking. The VSCodium project exists so that you don’t have to download+build from source. This project includes special build scripts that clone Microsoft’s vscode repo, run the build commands, and upload the resulting binaries for you to GitHub releases. These binaries are licensed under the MIT license. Telemetry is disabled. Note for Mac OS X Mojave users, if you see “App can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software” when opening VSCodium the first time, you can right-click the application and choose Open. This should only be required the first time opening on Mojave. The most up-to-date information on migrating from Visual Studio Code and other quirks you might encounter are documented. -
25
JetBrains Fleet
JetBrains
Built from scratch, based on 20 years of experience developing IDEs. JetBrains Fleet uses the IntelliJ code-processing engine, with a distributed IDE architecture and a reimagined UI. We built Fleet to be a fast and lightweight text editor for when you need to quickly browse and edit your code. It starts up in an instant so you can begin working immediately, and it can easily transform into an IDE, with the IntelliJ code-processing engine running separately from the editor itself. Fleet inherits the things that developers love the most from IntelliJ-based IDEs – project and context aware code completion, navigation to definitions and usages, on-the-fly code quality checks, and quick-fixes. Fleet’s architecture is designed to support a range of configurations and workflows. You can simply run Fleet just on your machine, or move some of the processes elsewhere – for example by locating the code processing in the cloud. -
26
Codeit
Codeit
We believe coding should be fun. Free of console commands and long builds. Run JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Markdown projects with a tap. Syntax highlighting loaded dynamically. Live views, repos, and files open instantly with a link. Works on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. Say goodbye to Ctrl + S. Never lose a character. Weighs 80% less than regular apps, can be installed and works offline. Format the selected code with Ctrl + D. Codeit doesn't use cookies or collect any personal data. Your code stays on your device.Starting Price: Free -
27
Firepad
Firepad
Firepad is an open source real-time collaborative text editor. It provides true collaborative editing, complete with intelligent operational transform-based merging and conflict resolution. Firepad can render documents using the CodeMirror, Ace, or Monaco editors, and its operational transform code borrows from ot.js. Behind the scenes, Firepad uses the Firebase Realtime Database for cloud data storage and synchronization. You can build any application that requires collaborative editing of text documents. Firepad supports both rich text and code editing out-of-the-box, and it's easy to extend for other use cases. Firepad was built by Michael Lehenbauer and the team at Firebase. There are many other features that could be added, please star Firepad on GitHub and send over a pull request when you have things to contribute! You can build any application that requires collaborative editing of text documents. -
28
Emacs
GNU
At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. Content-aware editing modes, including syntax coloring, for many file types. Complete built-in documentation, including a tutorial for new users. Full Unicode support for nearly all human scripts. Highly customizable, using Emacs Lisp code or a graphical interface. A wide range of functionality beyond text editing, including a project planner, mail and news reader, debugger interface, calendar, IRC client, and more. A packaging system for downloading and installing extensions. Built-in support for arbitrary-size integers. Text shaping with HarfBuzz. Native support for JSON parsing. Better support for Cairo drawing. Portable dumping used instead of unexec. Support for XDG conventions for init files. Additional early-init initialization file. Built-in support for tab bar and tab-line. Support for resizing and rotating of images without ImageMagick. -
29
Spacemacs
Spacemacs
A community-driven Emacs distribution. The best editor is neither Emacs nor Vim, it's Emacs and Vim! Spacemacs is a new way to experience Emacs, a sophisticated and polished set-up focused on ergonomics, mnemonics and consistency. Key bindings are organized using mnemonic prefixes like b for buffer, p for project, s for search, h for help etc. Innovative real-time display of available key bindings. Simple query system to quickly find available layers, packages and more. Similar functionalities have the same key binding everywhere thanks to a clearly defined set of conventions. Community-driven configuration provides curated packages tuned by power users and bugs are fixed quickly. -
30
Neovim
Neovim
API is first-class, discoverable, versioned, documented. MessagePack structured communication enables extensions in any language. Remote plugins run as co-processes, safely and asynchronously. GUIs, IDEs, web browsers can, embed Neovim as an editor or script host. Works the same everywhere, one build-type, one command. Modern terminal features such as cursor styling, focus events, bracketed paste. Built-in terminal emulator and strong defaults. Fully compatible with Vim's editing model and Vimscript v1. Start with :help nvim-from-vim if you already use Vim. The current stable release version is 0.5 (RSS). See the roadmap for progress and plans. With 30% less source-code than Vim, the vision of Neovim is to enable new applications without compromising Vim's traditional roles. Lua is built-in, but Vimscript is supported with the most advanced Vimscript engine in the world (featuring an AST-producing parser).