Compare the Top Free Code Editors as of April 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.

  • 1
    Apache NetBeans

    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
  • 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
    BlueGriffon

    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
  • 5
    Pulsar

    Pulsar

    Pulsar-Edit

    A community-led hyper-hackable text editor. Pulsar works across operating systems. Use it on OS X, Windows, or Linux. Search and install new packages or create your own right from Pulsar. Pulsar 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. Split your Pulsar interface into multiple panes to compare and edit code across files. Find, preview, and replace text as you type in a file or across all your projects.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 6
    Boost Note

    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
  • 7
    Bluefish

    Bluefish

    Bluefish

    Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and web developers, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages. See features for an extensive overview, take a look at the screenshots, or download it right away. Bluefish is an open-source development project, released under the GNU GPL license. Bluefish is a multi-platform application that runs on most desktop operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS-X, Windows, OpenBSD and Solaris. Bluefish 2.2.12 is a minor maintenance release with some minor new features. Most important is a fix for a crash in a simple search. Python 3 compatibility has been further improved. Encoding detection in python files has been improved. Triple-click now selects the line. On Mac OSX Bluefish deals better with the new permission features. Also using the correct language in the Bluefish user interface is fixed for certain languages on OSX.
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