Zed
High-performance multiplayer code editor
About Zed
Zed is a code editor written in Rust by the team behind Atom, built around the argument that editor performance is a correctness issue rather than a comfort one. An editor that stalls while you type breaks the loop where you hold a problem in your head, and no amount of features compensates. Zed is engineered for that: GPU-accelerated rendering, and a codebase with more than 89,000 stars on GitHub reflecting how much attention that argument has attracted.
Where it diverges from competitors is how AI is priced. Most AI editors charge a flat monthly fee for an assistant with opaque limits. Zed includes a token allowance and bills usage beyond it, which means light users are not subsidising heavy ones and heavy users are not throttled once they pass an invisible line. The free tier is a complete editor rather than a trial, Pro is $10 a month with $5 of tokens included and usage-based billing after that, and there is a $30 per-seat team tier. Multiplayer editing is native rather than an extension, so two engineers in the same buffer is a first-class feature.
Install it and use it as your editor. That part is free and not time-limited, because the product is an editor first and the AI is an addition. Turn on the AI features and a token allowance applies: $5 worth is included on Pro, and beyond that usage is billed as consumed, which makes the cost legible instead of hidden behind a fair-use policy. Collaboration works by inviting someone into your session, where they edit alongside you in real time rather than through a screen share, which changes pairing and code review from a call into a shared buffer. Because rendering is GPU-accelerated and the core is Rust, the editor stays responsive on large files where heavier editors struggle. Team plans add per-seat billing for organisations that want central management.
- •Rust and GPU-accelerated - Built for responsiveness on large files rather than feature count
- •Free Full Editor - The free tier is the editor, not a limited trial
- •Token-based AI Pricing - $5 of tokens on Pro then usage-based, so cost matches consumption
- •Native Multiplayer - Real-time collaborative editing built in rather than bolted on
- •Team Tier - $30 per seat per month for organisations
- •Open Development - Source public on GitHub with 89,000+ stars
- •From the Atom Team - Built by people who have shipped a widely used editor before
Developers who care about editor latency and have felt a heavier editor get in the way on a large codebase. The token-based AI pricing suits anyone who resents paying a flat assistant fee for occasional use, or who has hit an undisclosed cap on a plan they were already paying for. Native multiplayer makes it worth a look for teams that pair often, since the experience is meaningfully better than screen sharing. The honest caveats are ecosystem and habit: the extension catalogue is younger than VS Code, so a specific plugin you depend on may not exist yet, and moving editors costs real time before it saves any.
Pricing
$0 - $30/mo
- Personal$0/mo
- Pro$10/mo
- Business$30/mo
From the vendor pricing page, 2026-09-19
