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Zed vs IntelliJ IDEA: catalog facts
Zed	IntelliJ IDEA
Freemium The editor is free and open source. Zed's hosted AI plans are paid, and you can use your…	Freemium The Community Edition is free. IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate requires a paid subscription.
Windows, macOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Linux
GPU-rendered and written in Rust, so it stays responsive under load Real-time collaborative editing and a shared terminal	Refactorings and inspections that understand the whole project, not just the file Community Edition is free and open source
A much smaller extension ecosystem than VS Code Windows support arrived late and is still the least mature build	Framework support, profiler and database tools are Ultimate features Indexing a large project is slow and memory-hungry
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: GPL-3.0-or-later	License: Apache-2.0
No account needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.