Best GNU Emacs Alternatives in 2026
Taken from Code editors, where GNU Emacs is listed too, in the same order.
- 1
8.6 Club scoreVisual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a free code editor for macOS, Linux, Windows, and the web, with AI-assisted development features.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Web
- 2
8.3 Club scoreZed
Zed is a code editor for Linux, macOS, and Windows, with tools for editing, debugging, remote development, and working with Git.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 3 8.2 Club score
Vim
Vim is a configurable text editor designed for creating and changing text efficiently.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 4 8.2 Club score
Neovim
Neovim is a free, Vim-based text editor designed for extensibility and usability.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Android
- 5
8.2 Club scoreKate
Kate is a free text editor for viewing and editing text files on Linux, BSD, Windows, and macOS.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 6 8.2 Club score
ICEcoder
ICEcoder is a browser-based code editor for building, testing and maintaining websites.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Web
- 7
8.1 Club scoreVSCodium
VSCodium is a community-driven distribution of Microsoft's VS Code editor, offered as desktop binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 8 8.1 Club score
Lite XL
Lite XL is a free, lightweight text editor written in C and Lua.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Web
- 9 7.9 Club score
Bluefish
Bluefish is a free, open-source desktop editor for programmers and web developers who write websites, scripts, and other code.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 10
7.9 Club scoreSciTE
SciTE is a Scintilla-based text editor with facilities for building and running programs.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 11
7.9 Club scoreLapce
Lapce is an open-source code editor written in Rust for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
- Free plan
- Open source
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Browser extension
- 12 7.8 Club score
Geany
Geany is a free, lightweight integrated development environment for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 13
7.8 Club scoreCudaText
CudaText is a free, cross-platform text editor written in Object Pascal, with builds listed for Windows, Linux and macOS.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 14
7.8 Club scorePulsar
Pulsar is a free, open-source desktop text editor for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 15
7.8 Club scoreHelix
Helix is a free text editor designed for terminal use, with multiple selections at the center of its editing model.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 16 7.8 Club score
Textastic
- Free plan
- macOS · iPhone and iPad
- 17 7.8 Club score
GNU nano
GNU nano is a small, free text editor intended as a replacement for Pico while retaining reasonable compatibility.
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 18 7.8 Club score
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a text editor for code, markup, and prose on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- Free trial
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- 19 7.7 Club score
BBEdit
BBEdit is a text and HTML editor for macOS, built for writing, web authoring, and software development.
- Free plan
- macOS
- 20 7.7 Club score
FlashDevelop
- Free plan
- Windows · macOS · Linux