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Zed vs Pulsar: catalog facts
Zed	Pulsar
Freemium The editor is free and open source. Zed's hosted AI plans are paid, and you can use your…	Free The software is free under its open-source licence. Hosting, hardware and external…
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	It revives the Atom package ecosystem with its own package registry, so the hackable editor and its plugins…
A much smaller extension ecosystem than VS Code Windows support arrived late and is still the least mature build	It is still Electron-based and inherits Atom's memory use and startup time, with a much smaller maintainer team.
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: GPL-3.0-or-later	License: MIT
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.