Code editors are essential for a developer’s workflow. It’s one of the most important tools that a developer can have.
So, what makes a good code editor? There are many factors to consider when deciding on a code editor. In this article, we’ll go over the top 10 best code editors in 2021 and why they’re so great!
Table of Contents
Best Code Editor 2021

How much time do you spend in your code editor when you’re programming? It’s pretty high, right? Using a powerful editor can have an enormous impact on your productivity and workflow. Yet, while code editors have the same base premise, they aren’t all created equal, and each has something unique to set them apart from others.
Today, we’ll outline a selection of the 10 best code editors available right now, explain their features, and help you pick the one that suits you best. There are options for both experienced developers and beginners, editors for collaboration and real-time code sharing, and IDEs, meaning you can do a lot more with them than simply write code.

Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is an open-source code editor software developed by Microsoft. Of the code editors in this list, it’s probably the closest to being an IDE. You may find the program slow to start. Yet, given its robust features, Visual Studio Code has quickly risen in popularity as one of the best code editors among developers.
Price: Free
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Developer: Microsoft
Features:
- Built-in Git support
- In-editor debugging
- Large library of extensions and plugins
- IntelliSense (intelligent code completion)
- Very robust
Download Visual Studio Code

Vim
Vim is an advanced text editor open-source tool which is also considered to be an IDE in its way. The program is navigated entirely via the keyboard, making it much faster and more efficient — but only if you make an effort to learn how to operate it. There is no question that VIM is the most challenging code editor to learn on this list. Yet, it can really increase your productivity. Advanced developers love it because of how customizable and lightweight it is and because there’s no need to touch the mouse for the most part.
Price: Free
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Developer: Vim.org
Features:
- Extensive plugin system
- Good for keyboarders
- Custom commands
- Support for hundreds of programming languages and file formats
- Rock-solid and very fast
Download VIM

Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a beautiful, feature-rich code editor. It is lightweight, open, and ready to edit your file almost as soon as you’ve managed to click the button. Its responsiveness, performance, and User Experience make it the best code editor in its class. Unlike some of the other text editors featured here, though, Sublime Text isn’t free. However, for some users, the extra features make it definitely worth paying for.
Price: $80
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Developer: Sublime HQ
Features:
- Lightweight
- Project switching at the snap of a finger
- Split editing
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Distraction-free writing mode
- Plugins and expandability
Download Sublime Text

Atom
Atom, which describes itself as a ‘hackable text editor for the 21st century’, is one of the most customizable text editors around. While inspired by Sublime Text, Atom strove to take that editor’s features to the next step. It also simplified the UI so that users could have a clean experience. All these choices have skyrocketed its popularity and resulted in a passionate community ready to stand behind it. However, if compared with many other code editors, Atom is quite slow to start, and many developers experience performance issues.
Price: Free
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Developer: Github
Features:
- GitHub integration
- Smart autocompletion
- Snippets
- Extremely customizable
Download Atom

Notepad++
Notepad++ is a popular free-to-use code editor written in C++. Having been around since 2003, Notepad++ is an incredible, simple option not just for beginners but developers at any level. A lot of professional devs use Notepad++ as their daily driver because it’s light, efficient, and does what it needs to do.
Price: Free
Platform: Windows
Developer: Don Ho
Features:
- Highly customizable
- Auto-completion
- Syntax highlighting and folding
- Multi-view and multi-language support
Download Notepad++

Brackets
Created by Adobe in 2014, Brackets is a code editor made with both programmers and designers in mind. It’s designed to be minimal yet powerful and offers some unique features. One of those is Extract, a tool that allows you to extract information such as colors, fonts, gradients, and measurements, directly from PSDs as clean CSS.
Price: Free
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Developer: Adobe
Features:
- Live preview
- Preprocessor support
- Inline editors
- Pleasant looking UI
- Especially suited to macOS
Download Brackets

Bluefish
Bluefish is an advanced text editor with a variety of tools for programming and website development. Designed as a compromise between plain text editors and full programming IDEs, Bluefish is lightweight, fast, and easy to learn while providing many IDE features.
Price: Free
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, OpenBSD, and Solaris
Developer: Bluefish Dev Team
Features:
- Starts really quick and loads hundreds of files within seconds
- Multiple document interface
- The project support feature helps you to work efficiently on multiple projects
- Powerful search and replace
- Unlimited undo/redo functionality
- Auto-recovery
Download Bluefish

NetBeans
NetBeans is an open-source integrated development environment (IDE) that developers can use to develop applications using programming languages like PHP, Java, and C++, among many others. It is one of those rare code editors where one can highlight source codes syntactically. There are also several templates offered by NetBeans that can help you with the coding process.
Price: Free
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Solaris
Developer: Apache Software Foundation Oracle Corporation
Features:
- Helps you to write bug-free code
- Fast and smart code editing
- Easy and efficient project management
- Rich set of community provided plugins
- Rapid user interface development
Download NetBeans

UltraEdit
UltraEdit is a text editor by IDE Computer Solutions. It’s known for its performance, speed, and customization abilities, along with some nice-looking themes. From regular text editing to web development and file comparing, UltraEdit provides an impressive set of key features that come at a reasonable price.
Price: $79.95/year
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Developer: IDM Computer Solution
Features:
- Multi-caret editing
- License is good for up to 3 machines on any combination of platforms
- HTML live preview
- Column/block editing
- You’re able to edit extremely large files
Download UltraEdit

Codeshare
Codeshare is an online code editor with an emphasis on sharing code in real-time. Developers no longer have to be in the same room to see and edit changes. This is highly beneficial for interviews, troubleshooting, teaching. Codeshare is free, but if you want to keep the code for longer than 24 hours, you’ll have to sign up.
Price: Free
Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Developer: codeshare.io
Features:
- Free and no sign up required
- Your code can be saved if you sign up for a free account
- Real-time sharing
- Integrated video chat solution for logging in multiple members of your team
- Syntax highlighting
best code editor for windows
- Notepad++
Notepad++ best code editor
One of the most well-known code editors that developers all over the world have been using for quite a while is Notepad++. This amazing application was developed in C++. The initial launch version was very simple. It didn’t have a lot of functions back then, but Notepad++ garnered tons of positive reviews.
Not only developers but casual users also prefer using this tool over Windows’ native notepad application.
Using the pure win32 API, the Notepad++ has an amazing execution speed, which is great for the modern gen machines. Thanks to improved execution times, code compilation spans over a matter of few seconds. This helps programmers to get things done right away.
This application is only compatible with the Windows platform at the moment. It uses a GPL license to work. If you are a Mac fan, don’t worry. We have a couple of code editors appended down the list. Just keep glossing over it.
Key Features
Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion
User-defined Syntax highlighting and folding
Multi-view and Multi-Language support
Support syntax highlighting for languages like PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
Macro recording and playback
Entirely customizable GUI
Autosave
Guided indentation
Macros
Split-screen editing and synchronized scrolling
Pricing
Free
Check out the best task management tools for Mac:
10 Best Apps on Task Management for Mac in 2022 (New Guide)
- Atom
Atom best code editor
One of the most famous and useful code editors on this list is Atom. Used by millions of developers all over the world, it is an amazing application with a very simple UI that increases its usability.
One of the cool features of this best free code editor is that the developers can submit packages straight from the application. Atom is available for download at multiple platforms: Windows, Linux, and Mac devices. If you are a Mac OSX user, this is the perfect time for you to give this app a shot.
Key Features
Package Manager Integrated for Plugins support
Supports Command Palette
The feature of smart autocompletion
Cross-platform editing
Built-in package manager
File system browser
Find and replace tool
Smart autocompletion
Multiple panes
Packages and themes
Pricing
Free
- Visual Studio Code [VS Code]
visual code editor – best code editor
Belonging from the Family of software developed by the tech giant Microsoft, Visual Studio Code is an excellent code editor we have on the list. The application is an amazing piece of software that offers deep built-in support for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript.
One of the most effective and time-saving features of this application is its infusion with A.I.
That means that all of the code that the developer writes in the application is read by the software. As a result, it generates auto-responses for code writing. These responses are based on variable types, function definitions, and essential modules.
This application is available for download on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX.
Key Features
Code refactoring & debugging
Easy working with Git and other SCM (Software Configuration Management) providers
Easily extensible and customizable
Visual Studio Code CLI
Live Share
Helpers (Intellisense, Context Menus)
Plugins and Themes
Debugging
Split Views, Zen Mode
Integrated Terminal
Pricing
Free
- Brackets
Bracket best code editor
Although this list recommends some of the best code editors in the market, there is still no comparison to Brackets code editor. Yes, it is free, but what makes it really useful is the full barrage of extensive new features.
This application has a lightweight framework designed by the people over at Adobe. Believe me, those people know what they are doing. It is one of the best code editors that is completely open-source and you can modify it to your liking.
One of the most amazing features of this application is that you can choose between a browser view to look at how your code is doing or you can view the source code in its original form and modify it from there.
This application is available to be used on Windows, Linux, and Mac devices.
Key Features
Offers live preview, pre-processor support, and inline editors
Especially developed tool for macOS
Quick Edit UI feature puts context-specific code and tools inline
Pleasant looking UI
It comes with the inbuilt extension manager for fast & effective extension management
Quick Docs
JSLint
Live Preview
LESS support
Pricing
Free
nTask Logo
Seamless Collaboration for Teams
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Code better with team collaboration on nTask
Try it Now!
hero image
- NetBeans
Netbeans best code editor
Another code editor on this list that as one of the most famous code-editors is NetBeans. It is open-source software that the developers can use to develop applications using programming languages like PHP, Java, and C++, among many others.
This software also contains features like code analyzers that can debug your code for you and also convertors to change anything that needs modification.
If your applications were developed in the recent past, be advised that NetBeans allows you to upgrade all your applications to benefit from the new and improved Java 8 language constructs.
This application is ready to be used on Windows, Linux, and Mac devices.
Key Features
Offers fast & Smart Code Editing
Helps you to write bug-free code
Easy & Efficient Project Management
Rapid User Interface Development
Cross-platform support
Visual debugger
Static analysis tools
Code editor
Code converters
Multiple language support
NetBeans Profiler
Project management
Batch code analyzers
Pricing
Free
- Bluefish
bluefish best code editor
If you are a fan of working on dozens of different software at once and not wasting time for the code editor to take its sweet time to run your code, then Bluefish is the code editor that was designed with you in mind.
It is an excellent cross-platform editor that can handle many files of code at once and run them simultaneously. One other feature that the developers love about this application is that they can edit their code from their remote working station, which can be anywhere in the world.
This application contains many different options for web developers and programmers that can help them write code, websites, and scripts for quality testing of their software.
This application is available to be used by Windows, Linux, and Mac device owners.
Key Features
Auto-recovery of changes in modified documents after a crash, kill or shutdown
Unlimited undo/redo functionality
Loads hundreds of files within seconds
Project support feature helps you to work efficiently on multiple projects
Dialogues for many HTML tags, with all their attributes
User-customizable toolbar for quick access to often-used functions
Fully featured image insert dialogue
Multi-thumbnail generation for easy creation of photo albums or screenshot pages
Pricing
Free
- Vim
Vim best code editor
Another software that is reportedly comprehensive and can be considered an IDE within itself is called: Vim. It is an extremely advanced code editor that is open-source which gives you the ability to modify the application to your liking as a developer.
With the help of Vim editors and UNIX systems embedded in the software, the application can manage all of the text-editing activities of the developers in no time at all, whether the application is used online or on the premises.
This application is available to be used by Linux Devices.
Key Features
It is command centric which lets you perform complex text related task with few commands
There are many plug-in available for Vim. Its functionality can be extended in a great manner using these plug-in
Same as multiple windows, it also supports multiple buffers
It supports recording features which allow to record and play Vim commands in a repeated manner
Its memory footprint is exceptionally low
It is highly configurable and uses a simple text file to store its configuration
It supports multiple windows. Using this feature screen can be split into multiple windows
It supports multiple tabs which allow you to work on multiple files
Pricing
Free
- Geany
Geany best free code editor
Next on this list of amazing code-editors, we have the software Geany. This application is quite effective because it uses the GTK+ toolkit to accommodate all of the code that the developers push on the software.
An amazing feature of this application is that it has all of the necessary basic components that make up an effectively integrated development environment or (IDE).
The developers can use this application to produce applications thanks to the software’s library that is full of different filetypes and other important features.
Geany supports Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux operating systems.
Key Features
Navigating through the source code is easy
Show status message on attempt to execute empty context action
Allows you to add a note for applying the indent settings in the project preferences
Allows popup menu on message window notebooks and sidebar
Syntax highlighting
Autocompletion of symbols/words
Auto-closing of XML and HTML tags
Many supported filetypes including C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl, Pascal, and others
Code navigation
Simple project management
Code folding for an overall organized approach to coding huge programs
Construct completion/snippets
Call tips
Symbol lists
Build a system to compile and execute your code
Plugin interface
Pricing
Free
- Komodo Edit
komodo best code editor
The software Komodo Edit is an intuitive but immensely powerful code editor that can easily run those long codes that you spent your sprints on.
The application allows you to perform the following functions straight from the application. These functions are integrations with other technologies like Docker, Grunt, Vagrant, PhoneGap, and many others like them.
You can also perform unit testing for all your quality assurance processes, debugging to make your code error-free and code refactoring.
This application is available to be used by Windows, Linux, and Mac device owners from all over the world.
Key Features
A lot of contemporary color schemes
Easily integrates into the desktop environment
Multi-Language Editor
Native Unicode support and Unicode compatibility checking
Track Changes
Multiple selections
Quick bookmarks
Smart language detection
Split view and multi-window
Variable highlighting
Symbol browser
Autocomplete and call tips
Soft characters and matching braces
Pricing
A free trial is available
Conclusion
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