The best code editors

Finding the best code editor can have a big impact on your productivity and workflow. Whether you are new to the world of programming or an old hand, you'll need a great code editor to help you perform your magic.

The best code editors will make you more efficient at coding and writing, assist you in examining and editing your code, and be customizable to meet your needs. They will also create a more comfortable user experience, which should not be underestimated, as you’ll be looking at your code editor for potentially hours every day.

There are dozens of text editors, code editors, IDEs, and more out there for you to choose from. So how do you pick? You really only want to have to make the switch to a new editor once in a while, as you'll lose some efficiency while you’re adjusting to the different software.

On this page, we'll take an in-depth look at what we think are the five best code editors for developers and designers. And while you're considering your toolkit, take a look at out guide to best web design tools right now.

01. Sublime Text 3

The best code editor all-round – but you'll have to pay for it

• Price: $80 (free indefinite preview) | Stability: High | Speed: High | UI/UX: Medium | Customizability: High
• Lightweight and speedy
• Extremely extendable
• Not free
• Nagging popup for payment

Sublime Text is the editor that really changed the way code editors worked. It is lightweight, open and ready to edit your file almost as soon as you have managed to click the button. This responsiveness is one of the things that makes Sublime Text the best code editor in its class. If you want to open a file and make a quick edit, waiting for a few seconds for loading may not sound like much, but the delay can grow tedious.

Another big benefit of Sublime Text is that it is crazily extensible, with a huge and ever-growing list of plugins available to install via the package manager. Options include themes with which to customize the editor’s appearance, code linters (which can assist with more quickly locating any errors in your code), Git plugins, colour pickers, and more.

Sublime Text is free to download and start using, but for extended use you'll need to shell out $80 for a license – and the programmer will remind you fairly regularly about payment until you cough up. If you decide to pay, the same license key can be used by you for any computer that you use, so you can enter the same code on all your machines to make the payment reminder popup go away. The paid lice license nce, however, is perhaps Sublime Text’s biggest downside – there are a number of competitive products available to developers for no cost.

02. Visual Studio Code

The most fully featured, well-rounded code editor

• Price: Free | Stability: High | Speed: Medium | UI/UX: High | Customizability: Medium
• Good for complex, larger projects
• Very robust
• Built-in Git support
• Slow to start up

Visual Studio Code is a code editor developed by Microsoft, and surprisingly, is an open-source software. VS Code is perhaps the closest code editor in this list to being an IDE. It is very robust, and is also one of the slower programs when starting up. However, while using it, VS Code is quick and able to handle quite a few interesting tasks, such as quick Git commits or opening and sorting through multiple folders’ worth of content.

VS Code has seen a meteoric rise in popularity – it is continually growing its user base and attracting developers away from other editors. VS Code has a built-in terminal, as well as built-in Git support, both of which are big winners for fans of this program. Its ‘IntelliSense’ feature offers autocompletion of code as well as information on the parameters of functions and known variable names.

03. Atom

The best free code editor, with a friendly UI

• Price: Free | Stability: Medium | Speed: Medium | UI/UX: High | Customisability: High
• Integrated with Git and GitHub
• Quick and reliable
• Slow to launch
• Historical performance issues

Atom is open source and developed by GitHub. In its initial development, it was heavily influenced by the new style of editor made popular by Sublime Text. However, there are key differences: Atom is free and open source, and offers easy out-of-box integration with Git and GitHub. Atom has historically had performance and stability problems, but those have diminished significantly as it has matured. It’s true that it still launches slower than some editors, but it’s just as reliable and quick to use as any of the rest after that.