The best text editors, according to hackers
56 text editors were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 23 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The three most recommended text editors with the badge. Each figure is 50 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Extreme customization through Elisp
Long-time users praise Emacs as a deeply programmable Lisp environment you can reshape endlessly, with excellent built-in help, but it takes heavy configuration and its defaults feel dated.
Fast keyboard-driven editing and navigation
A free, lightweight terminal editor whose fast keyboard-driven editing and macros stay useful for decades on any machine, though critics cite poor defaults and cumbersome mode switching.
Fully keyboard-driven workflow
A keyboard-driven, extensible Vim fork with built-in LSP, Lua scripting and a strong plugin ecosystem, though critics cite breaking changes and an upgrade that deleted old Vim undo files.
All 56 text editors, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| 2 | GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| 3 | Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| 4 | Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| 5 | Neovim | 295 | 111 | 73% | 12 | 6 yrs20 owners | Approved |
| 6 | VS Code | 273 | 241 | 53% | 13 | 2 yrs6 owners | — |
| 7 | Sublime Text | 184 | 40 | 82% | 12 | 15 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| 8 | Helix | 128 | 42 | 75% | 12 | 2 yrs11 owners | Approved |
| 9 | Notepad++ | 104 | 111 | 48% | 11 | 5 yrs5 owners | — |
| 10 | Windows Notepad | 86 | 251 | 26% | 12 | — | — |
| 11 | vi text editor | 67 | 34 | 66% | 12 | 34 yrs16 owners | — |
| 12 | GNU nano | 52 | 18 | 74% | 11 | 15 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| 13 | Kate text editor | 49 | 7 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
| 14 | BBEdit | 48 | 9 | 84% | 9 | 30 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| 15 | VSCodium | 41 | 17 | 71% | 11 | — | Approved |
| 16 | Fresh terminal editor | 37 | 9 | 80% | 9 | — | Approved |
| 17 | Gram editor | 25 | 1 | 96% | 9 | — | Approved |
| 18 | Rune editor | 22 | 17 | 56% | 7 | — | — |
| 19 | ed text editor | 21 | 5 | 81% | 10 | — | Approved |
| 20 | micro text editor | 19 | 2 | 90% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Tied 21 | Lem editor | 18 | 9 | 67% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Tied 21 | Kakoune | 18 | 2 | 90% | 10 | — | Approved |
| 23 | Atom editor | 16 | 20 | 44% | 8 | — | — |
| Tied 24 | Microsoft Edit | 15 | 4 | 79% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Tied 24 | TextEdit | 15 | 11 | 58% | 8 | — | — |
| Tied 26 | Acme text editor | 14 | 2 | 88% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Tied 26 | Ki Editor | 14 | 7 | 67% | 2 | — | — |
| 28 | Textadept | 13 | 1 | 93% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Tied 29 | Trust Rust IDE | 12 | 1 | 92% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 29 | Rhun code editor | 12 | 4 | 75% | 1 | — | — |
| Tied 31 | TextMate | 11 | 1 | 92% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Tied 31 | Panic Nova | 11 | 4 | 73% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Tied 31 | joe text editor | 11 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Tied 31 | NEO Emacs | 11 | 13 | 46% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 31 | Minimalist browser editor by medv.io | 11 | 8 | 58% | 1 | — | — |
| Tied 36 | Geany | 10 | 1 | 91% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Tied 36 | Microsoft Edit | 10 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Tied 38 | Sam text editor | 9 | 3 | 75% | 8 | — | — |
| Tied 38 | CotEditor | 9 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
| 40 | Emacs on Android | 8 | 2 | 80% | 3 | — | — |
| 41 | NEdit | 7 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
| Tied 42 | Pulsar text editor | 6 | 1 | 86% | 6 | — | — |
| Tied 42 | vis text editor | 6 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
| Tied 42 | Pico text editor | 6 | 5 | 55% | 5 | — | — |
| Tied 42 | nvi | 6 | 1 | 86% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 42 | Atto text editor (NetBSD) | 6 | 6 | 50% | 1 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | Tilde text editor | 5 | 2 | 71% | 5 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | MS-DOS Editor | 5 | 2 | 71% | 5 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | Pragtical | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | Sam text editor | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | KWrite | 5 | 2 | 71% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | Metapad | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | Notepad2 | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | SubEthaEdit | 5 | 1 | 83% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | NotepadNext | 5 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
| Tied 47 | terminal-code | 5 | 4 | 56% | 1 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same text editor in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to text editors that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
Rankings are never for sale. We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the order.