BBEdit vs Kate
BBEdit
barebones.com
Kate
kate-editor.orgSide by side
| Figure | BBEdit | Kate |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $59.99/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 1 |
| Spec score · Text Editors | 8.6 (#11) | 8.5 (#14) |
| Spec score · Code editors | 8.4 (#13) | 8.5 (#10) |
| Column editing | Yes | Yes |
| Extension support | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Privacy | Bare Bones says BBEdit worksheet queries and responses go directly to the ChatGPT API over HTTPS and are not received or retained by Bare Bones. | KDE says its software generally does not transfer information from users’ devices except after explicit user action; any telemetry is opt-in and disabled by default. |
| Product | BBEdit is a professional HTML and text editor for macOS aimed at writers, web authors, and software developers. | Kate is a text editor for viewing and editing text files. |
| Support | Technical support is available by email or contact form; the company says it does not offer telephone or on-site support. | Kate support is offered through its KDE Discuss section, Matrix channel and KDE bug tracker. |
| Supported platforms | macOS | Linux,BSD,Windows,macOS |
Plans
BBEdit
- Free ModeFree
- BBEdit license$59.99 a month
- Mac App Store subscriptionPrice not published
- BBEdit Free ModeFree
- BBEdit 16 Individual$59.99, paid once
In their own words
BBEdit
BBEdit is a text and HTML editor for writers, web authors, and software developers using macOS. Its tools include grep pattern matching, multi-file search and replace, syntax coloring, function navigation, code folding, and text completion. For web authoring, it provides HTML markup tools, standards-based syntax checking, and live previews of HTML and Markdown documents. A license adds Git and Subversion support, and licensed users can create in-app worksheets to converse with ChatGPT, Claude, and Ollama. Workflow options include AppleScript, macOS Unix scripting, Automator, Xcode as an external editor, and the Language Server Protocol. BBEdit can open and save text files on FTP and SFTP servers. Free Mode continues after the 30-day evaluation period, though some advanced features require a paid license. The listed BBEdit 16 Individual plan costs $59.99 as a one-time purchase. BBEdit 16 requires macOS 14.0 or later and supports Intel and Apple silicon Macs; Bare Bones says there are no Windows or Linux versions.
Kate
Kate is a free text editor for viewing and editing text files on Linux, macOS and Windows. It can show multiple documents in horizontally or vertically split windows, and supports multi-cursor and column editing. For code and other structured text, Kate provides syntax highlighting for over 400 languages, bracket matching and on-the-fly spell checking. Programming tools include auto-completion with argument hints, scriptable auto-indentation and Vi input mode; the editor uses the Language Server Protocol for auto-completion in many languages. Search and replace handles regular expressions, multiline searches, open files and files on disk. Listed plugins include an embedded terminal, SQL, build, GDB and Replace in Files tools. Kate can open remote files and supports Unicode and other encodings. Backups on save and swap files can help recover data after a system crash. The editor is free, and its listed plan describes it as available for Linux, Windows and macOS. Nightly packages are compiled daily, but may be unstable or incomplete and are recommended for testing.