| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Text Editors | 9.0 (#4) | 8.3 (#26) |
| Spec score · Code editors | 8.9 (#4) | 7.8 (#35) |
| Spec score · Editor Software | 8.7 (#4) | 8.2 (#13) |
| Customization options | Users can customize it with Emacs Lisp code or a graphical interface. | Users can configure nano through nanorc files and choose options such as syntax highlighting and line wrapping. |
| Built-in documentation | It includes complete built-in documentation and a tutorial for new users. | The project provides an online manual, FAQ, shortcut overview, PDF manual, and man pages. |
| Extension support | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 1990 | 1999 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Macro recording | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Users can seek help through the help-gnu-emacs mailing list or gnu.emacs.help newsgroup, and report bugs with M-x report-emacs-bug. | The project directs usage questions to its help mailing list and bug reports to the Savannah bug tracker. |
| Supported platforms | GNU/Linux, BSDs, Haiku, Windows, macOS, and Android. | Linux,Windows,macOS |
| Unicode | It provides full Unicode support for nearly all human scripts. | Nano supports reading, entering, and saving Unicode text when the terminal encoding and locale use UTF-8. |