Bluefish vs Zed

Bluefish is a free, open-source desktop editor for programmers and web developers. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and supports more than 30 markup and programming languages. The editor is designed for websites, scripts, and programming code, with project support for working across multiple projects while restoring each project’s settings. Bluefish can load and save remote files through FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, and CIFS via gvfs. Editing tools include regular-expression search and replace, snippets, unlimited undo and redo, crash recovery for modified documents, code folding, bracket and tag highlighting, autocompletion, and automatic tag closing for many languages. It can open more than 1,000 documents, with the features page reporting tests above 10,000 simultaneously. External programs and custom scripts can be integrated. The official Flatpak’s strict security blocks some system-tool and browser integrations.

Zed is a code editor for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with Personal, Pro, and Business plans. Personal is free forever and includes 2,000 accepted edit predictions; it also allows unlimited use with API keys or external agents. Pro costs $10.00 per month, includes unlimited edit predictions and $5 of tokens, and bills usage beyond that allowance at API list price plus 10%. The Pro trial lasts 14 days or until its $5 balance is used, with no credit card required. Editing tools include extensions, multi-cursor and column editing, and macro recording; the editor also supports a built-in debugger, remote development, and language servers. Native Git operations include staging, commits, pulls, pushes, and viewing diffs. Users can chat with teammates, code together, and share screens and projects. Supported model providers include Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic, GitHub Copilot, Google AI, and OpenAI; the extension ecosystem has hundreds of extensions. Business costs $30.00 per month and has no minimum seat count. SSO, SAML, and SCIM are planned but not currently available.