Compare the Top Free Code Editors as of December 2025

What are Free Code Editors?

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 Free Code Editors currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

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    Sublime Text

    Sublime Text

    Sublime HQ

    A sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. Use Goto Anything to open files with only a few keystrokes, and instantly jump to symbols, lines or words. Make ten changes at the same time, not one change ten times. Multiple selections allow you to interactively change many lines at once, rename variables with ease, and manipulate files faster than ever. The Command Palette holds infrequently used functionality, like sorting, changing the syntax and changing the indentation settings. With just a few keystrokes, you can search for what you want, without ever having to navigate through the menus or remember obscure key bindings. Sublime Text has a powerful, Python API that allows plugins to augment built-in functionality. Package Control can be installed via the command palette, providing simple access to thousands of packages built by the community.
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    Starting Price: $80 one-time fee
  • 2
    Atom

    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
  • 3
    NoteTab

    NoteTab

    Fookes Software

    For some NoteTab is simply the best Notepad replacement out there. For webmasters it’s the fastest HTML editor. For others it’s the most versatile text editor. For power users it’s a unique text-processing work horse. What will it be for you? In a moment, we’re going to reveal to you the 10 most significant features that have turned NoteTab into one of the most awarded text editors ever. But first an interesting fact in case you’ve never heard of NoteTab before. The tab bar. It’s a feature users have always loved about NoteTab. Open as many files as you like, each one with its own tab. Rearrange tabs any way you like in the convenient tab bar.
    Starting Price: $39.95 one-time payment
  • 4
    EmEditor

    EmEditor

    Emurasoft

    EmEditor is a fast, lightweight, yet extensible, easy-to-use text editor for Windows. Both native 64-bit and 32-bit builds are available, and moreover, the 64-bit includes separate builds for SSE2 (128-bit), AVX-2 (256-bit), and AVX-512 (512-bit) instruction sets.
    Starting Price: $39.99
  • 5
    Komodo IDE

    Komodo IDE

    ActiveState Software

    Code faster with the IDE for today’s web languages – Python, PHP, Perl, Golang, Ruby and more.
  • 6
    Dev-C++

    Dev-C++

    Embarcadero

    Embarcadero Dev-C++ is a new and improved fork (sponsored by Embarcadero) of Bloodshed Dev-C++ and Orwell Dev-C++. It is a full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and code editor for the C/C++ programming language. It uses Mingw port of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) as its compiler. Embarcadero Dev-C++ can also be used in combination with Cygwin or any other GCC based compiler. Embarcadero Dev-C++ is built using the latest version of Embarcadero Delphi. Embarcadero Dev-C++ has a low memory footprint because it is a native Windows application and does not use Electron. Optimized for parallel compilation on modern multi-core machines.
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    Predator CNC Editor

    Predator CNC Editor

    Predator Software

    The Predator CNC Editor is the most popular CNC code editor available on the market. It includes hundreds of features to improve the day to day productivity of CNC machine tools, operators and CNC programmers, yet it is extremely easy to use. The Predator CNC Editor is the ideal choice for the small job shop or the largest manufacturer.
    Starting Price: $250
  • 8
    Eclipse Theia

    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
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