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Zed

Zed Industries US

Zed is a standalone code editor written in Rust with GPU rendering, built-in multiplayer collaboration and a free Personal plan that works fully with your own API keys. It fits developers who want a fast native editor and intend to bring their own agent.

From
€9.20
Free plan
Yes
Trial
No
Visit the vendor site Opens the vendor site in a new tab Editorial score 8.2 /10

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Best for

Developers who want a fast native editor and will supply their own model or agent

Strengths / Weaknesses

Strengths

  • Personal plan is free forever and unlimited with your own key or an external agent
  • Rust editor with GPU rendering, noticeably faster than Electron alternatives
  • Business at USD 30 per seat has no minimum seat count
  • Multiplayer collaboration is built in rather than bolted on

Weaknesses

  • Pro includes only USD 5 of tokens, so heavy agent use becomes usage billing quickly
  • The extension ecosystem is much smaller than VS Code's
  • Business seats bundle no fixed AI credit allotment

Pricing

Plan Price Unit Note
Personal Price on request per user free forever, unlimited use with your own API keys or external agents
Pro Price on request per user USD 10 per month, Zed-hosted models, USD 5 of tokens included
Business Price on request per seat USD 30 per seat per month, org-wide AI policies, no minimum seat count

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Verdict

The most honest free offer in this category, because Personal is not a trial: it is the full editor, unlimited, as long as you bring your own key or run Claude Code or the Codex CLI inside it. Pro at EUR 9.20 is reasonable if you want hosted models, and Business without a seat minimum is unusually friendly to small teams. The extension gap against VS Code is the real cost.

Other Developer tools software

Claude Code Sustained agentic work on a real codebase across terminal, IDE, desktop and CI €15.64 9.3 OpenAI Codex EU teams that need documented data residency on the model writing their code €18.40 8.9 Cline Developers and teams who want an agent with no subscription and full control over the model and the bill Free plan 8.4 GitHub Copilot Teams who want AI in the editor they already use, at the lowest credible price €9.20 8 Cursor Developers who want the agent inside a fast editor and work mainly in Grok models €7.36 7.6 Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf Teams that want an agent manager with an IDE around it, rather than an editor with AI added €18.40 7.2

Where we write about it

Where these numbers come from

  1. [1] Zed pricing, Personal, Pro and Business, USD converted at 1 USD = 0.92 EUR accessed 2026-11-11
  2. [2] Zed repository, source available on GitHub accessed 2026-11-11

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