# LazyVim

39 Hacker News commenters recommended LazyVim and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a ready-made Neovim setup that feels like an IDE with sensible plugins; critics find it cluttered and complex.

## Why people recommend it

- Full IDE feel out of the box (5 comments): "This gets you a fully featured vscode-like baseline (navigation, language integration, integrated terminal, the whole thing)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46287692)) "LazyVim is about as easy as it gets in the Vim space for a fully-fledged (but customizable) editor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288066)) "comes with a pre-configured neovim (using lazyvim) setup that looks like a fully-fledged IDE" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46287906))
- Batteries-included defaults that work well (4 comments): "out of the box lazyvim is pretty sane and you may not need much to get it to your liking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46507448)) "it comes with a bunch of very sensible plugins and you can read through the lazyvim docs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570632)) "Lazyvim has been pretty batteries included and easy to modify for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49664370))
- Quick to set up and configure (4 comments): "The speed I was able to configure it exactly how I wanted" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47375734)) "I took a git clone and cp command to get up and running" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570243)) "lazyvim is a git pull and done sort of thing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48590345))
- Good docs and configured defaults (2 comments): "Lazyvim makes it so that for everything you want to do, there's an already configured way" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46190797)) "there's great docs and autocomplete for the lua stuff built in to the lazynvim distro" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47017222))

## What people warn about

- Too complex and cluttered (2 comments): "It transformed vim into some kind of hallucinogenic kaleidoscope of an IDE with all sorts of telescoping overlays and pop-ups" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570799)) "I've seen people touting Neovim setup that are just making things complex and fragile for no reason." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46291596))
- Drifts from plain Vim (2 comments): "When you start with something like Lazyvim, you're missing on everything that makes vim, vim." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46300909)) "I ended up just going back to my simple but effective neovim config" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46432355))
- Hard to get used to (2 comments): "I tried using LazyVim for quite some time but I kept having a hard time getting used to it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48119580)) "it's a little to much for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118726))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [AstroNvim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/astronvim.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "LazyVim", https://hackerapproved.com/p/lazyvim/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).