BenchRank
#11 in Code AssistantsUpdated 2026-08

Zed

by Zed · Open-source Rust code editor with collaboration and agentic editing

BenchRank score

62.8 — BenchRank score out of 100

Screenshots of Zed

Homepage · Zed

Homepage of Zed

Overview

Zed is a code editor written from scratch in Rust that uses multiple CPU cores and the GPU. It covers multiplayer collaboration, agentic editing with parallel agent threads, a Debug Adapter Protocol debugger, Git operations, LSP support and Vim or Helix bindings. AI can run on Zed-hosted models, your own API keys or external agents, and can be turned off entirely.

Best for
Developers wanting a fast open-source editor with optional built-in AI and team-level admin controls
Pricing
Free Personal tier, then Pro at $10/month with $5 of tokens included, and Business at $30 per seat per month.
Runs on
macOSLinuxSelf-hosted

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

  • Written from scratch in Rust; uses multiple CPU cores and the GPU
  • Free tier is a full editor and AI features can be disabled
  • Bring your own keys: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Ollama and more
  • Open source, with macOS, Linux and Windows builds

Trade-offs

  • SSO, SAML and SCIM are planned but not currently available
  • Business has no free trial, only a cancel-anytime monthly plan
  • Pro includes just $5 of tokens; beyond that, API list price +10%
  • Free tier caps accepted edit predictions at 2,000

Pricing

Published plans and prices from Zed’s own pricing page.

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

  • MCP support

    Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.

  • API quality

    Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.

  • Documentation

    Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.

  • Agent friendliness

    How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.

  • Pricing transparency

    Whether real prices are published, self-serve signup exists, and usage costs are knowable without a sales call.

  • Changelog

    A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.

  • Marketing site structure

    Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.

  • Page speed

    How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.

  • Operational trust

    Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

  • Openness

    Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.

  • Maintenance

    Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.

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Where this comes from

The Zed pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.

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