LazyVim
Hacker ApprovedNeovim distribution in Developer tools
Recommended as a ready-made Neovim setup that feels like an IDE with sensible plugins; critics find it cluttered and complex.
Recommended as a ready-made Neovim setup that feels like an IDE with sensible plugins; critics find it cluttered and complex.
46 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 39
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 39 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Full IDE feel out of the box
“This gets you a fully featured vscode-like baseline (navigation, language integration, integrated terminal, the whole thing).”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot” “LazyVim is about as easy as it gets in the Vim space for a fully-fledged (but customizable) editor.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot” “comes with a pre-configured neovim (using lazyvim) setup that looks like a fully-fledged IDE”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot” - Comment from 13 May 2026 in “The vi family”
- Comment from 10 Oct 2026 in “I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again”
Batteries-included defaults that work well
“out of the box lazyvim is pretty sane and you may not need much to get it to your liking”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “I switched from VSCode to Zed” “it comes with a bunch of very sensible plugins and you can read through the lazyvim docs”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “Neovim 0.12.0” “Lazyvim has been pretty batteries included and easy to modify for me”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Toast, a by default in-terminal IDE” - Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot”
Quick to set up and configure
“The speed I was able to configure it exactly how I wanted”
Comment from 14 Mar 2026 in “Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI” “I took a git clone and cp command to get up and running”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “Neovim 0.12.0” “lazyvim is a git pull and done sort of thing”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving” - Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs”
Good docs and configured defaults
“Lazyvim makes it so that for everything you want to do, there's an already configured way”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Twelve Days of Shell” “there's great docs and autocomplete for the lua stuff built in to the lazynvim distro”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Vim 9.2 Released”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Too complex and cluttered
“It transformed vim into some kind of hallucinogenic kaleidoscope of an IDE with all sorts of telescoping overlays and pop-ups”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “Neovim 0.12.0” “I've seen people touting Neovim setup that are just making things complex and fragile for no reason.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot” Drifts from plain Vim
“When you start with something like Lazyvim, you're missing on everything that makes vim, vim.”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot” “I ended up just going back to my simple but effective neovim config”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “You Need to Ditch VS Code” Hard to get used to
“I tried using LazyVim for quite some time but I kept having a hard time getting used to it”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “The vi family” “it's a little to much for me”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “The vi family”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LazyVimThis page | 39 | 7 | 85% | 11 | — | Approved |
| AstroNvim | 8 | 3 | 73% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 61 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it's an IDE straight out of the box”
“Having them is your toolbet helps me and my agents build better tools.”
“Lazyvim has been pretty batteries included and easy to modify for me”
“The Neovim/LazyVim speed for writing code turns out to be just as fast for navigating and reviewing code.”
“lazyvim which has tons of languages you can select to add LSPs for”
“lazyvim is a git pull and done sort of thing”
“lazyvim is maintained by folke who I hear loves breaking changes”
“Using the LazyVim distribution of Neovim and it works quite well for my purposes.”
“Lazyvim and resurrect look like just what I need to take the next step.”
“I've switched to lazyvim and have never looked back.”
“I tried using LazyVim for quite some time but I kept having a hard time getting used to it”
“it's a little to much for me”
“what is becoming my favorite thing about LazyVim's default config”
“Turns your copy of NeoVim into an IDE.”
“since I'm in terminal anyway it just feels more natural”
“I use lazyvim as base for LSPs, snacks, neo-tree and a theme matching the rest of my desktop and it seems to be fine”
“It transformed vim into some kind of hallucinogenic kaleidoscope of an IDE with all sorts of telescoping overlays and pop-ups”
“it comes with a bunch of very sensible plugins and you can read through the lazyvim docs”
“I took a git clone and cp command to get up and running”
“The lazyvim package manager has all the bells and whistles, especially lazy loading plugins”
“the one thing that made it stick for me over VSCode was LazyVim”
“The speed I was able to configure it exactly how I wanted”
“there's great docs and autocomplete for the lua stuff built in to the lazynvim distro”
“I don't pay the startup cost of waiting for 50 plugins I'm not going to use.”
“Folke is a goddamn wizard and I want to spend more time getting work done”
“it remains my favorite text entry and code editing environment”
“Batteries included is nice but requires maniacal restraint.”
“out of the box lazyvim is pretty sane and you may not need much to get it to your liking”
“I ended up just going back to my simple but effective neovim config”
“I think is a really polished experience as well”
“When you start with something like Lazyvim, you're missing on everything that makes vim, vim.”
“I've seen people touting Neovim setup that are just making things complex and fragile for no reason.”
“a set of default plugins play well with each other”
“LazyVim is about as easy as it gets in the Vim space for a fully-fledged (but customizable) editor.”
“comes with a pre-configured neovim (using lazyvim) setup that looks like a fully-fledged IDE”
“This gets you a fully featured vscode-like baseline (navigation, language integration, integrated terminal, the whole thing).”
“Lazyvim makes it so that for everything you want to do, there's an already configured way”
“Thanks to Lazyvim, you can set it up faster”
“I'm comfortable outsourcing the consistency to a distro”
“I will never not use LazyVim until something better comes along”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.