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Microsoft Visual Studio Code vs. Sublime Text vs. TextEdit

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Microsoft Visual Studio Code

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft offers Visual Studio Code, an open source text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.

    $0

    Sublime Text

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/ASublime Text is a highly customizable text editing solution featuring advanced API, Goto functions, and other features, from Sublime HQ in Sydney.

    $80

    TextEdit

    Score2 out of 10
    N/ATextEdit is a free and open source distributed with MacOS since Apple acquired NeXT.N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeSublime TextTextEdit
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Business
    $80.00
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeSublime TextTextEdit
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeSublime TextTextEdit
    Considered Multiple Products
    Microsoft
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    I also used sublime and notepad++.
    compared to them, Microsoft Visual Studio Code provide better balance between performance, features, and flexibility. Its lightweight like Sublime Text but offer more features and many extension support.
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code is free, …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    prior to Visual Studio Code, I was using Sublime Text, which was not the most effective in terms of third-party libraries and complex debugging, so I switched to Visual Studio Code where I got a positive as a developer. it is having all the features and third-party libraries to …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    While Sublime Text, another free alternative, is faster and snappier than Code, the extensions that are available on it are sub-par (it doesn't even have an official extension store). This makes using it for any serious work unpleasant, at least to me.

    IntelliJ's dedicated IDEs …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Compared against a lot of other popular IDEs, I would say that VSCode is the perfect balance between complexity, language support, etc, for web languages. It's faster than most (though not quite as fast as native ones like Notepad++ or Sublime Text), and very flexible. Even in …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    We moved from Sublime Text. Microsoft Visual Studio Code has similar features, such as a mini view of the document along the right side.

    Microsoft Visual Studio Code is also freeware. Sublime Text is $80 per seat, so when you add team members the costs increase.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    I've used Eclipse and NetBeans for Java development and VS Code was easily competitive with NetBeans but I still haven't found the development experience to be as good as Eclipse when working with Java. I've also used the Visual Studio IDE for C# development and have generally …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    I used Sublime Text in my introductory years for its syntax highlighting and some customization support. Atom quickly grew to a more powerful IDE with their ability for extensions so that was an easy change. I found that Atom didn't run as reliably as I had hoped, and had …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Overall, compared to all other open source text editors like Sublime Text, Vim, etc, I've noticed that the Visual Studio Code has been updated regularly which makes it work more efficiently and resolves any bugs on a continuous basis. I feel like VS Code has the speed like Subli…
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Sublime Text is strictly a text editor and it is the most robust around in my opinion. It is better than Microsoft Visual Studio Code in this respect, but VS Code has other tools that make using it more streamlined. Brackets has a bit of the weakness of VS Code and Sublime …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    As mentioned before, IDE's can be excellent with one thing, and the company we do a lot of things, so it's kind of annoying to have multiple programs, heavy ones to open your work, so just use one, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, personalize thanks to extensions, and you are …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code happened to be the easiest, fastest and more extendible between the tested IDEs, making it our to-go choice
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code provides more flexibility and supports easy integration to different platforms (including cloud). It is more modular and lighter application as compared to other integrated development environments. Microsoft Visual Studio Code is easy to learn and …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    All the previously listed are incredible development environments that perfectly fulfill this function, but [Microsoft] Visual Studio Code goes one step ahead by providing flexibility, customization and adaptability to development environments with its own methodology, for all …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    When you start using [Microsoft Visual Studio Code], it lands more on the "text editor" side of the spectrum, akin to Vim/Emacs/Sublime. Aligned with this, it's fast and easy to install and setup, and competes with the best of them as a great general purpose tool. But then it …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    [Microsoft] Visual Studio Code beats the competition due to its extensibility. Their robust extensions architecture combined with the plethora of mostly free extensions written by the community can't be beaten. The fact that this tool itself is provided by a world-recognized …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Every IDE has almost the same features but being lightweight is a plus point for the IDE so that you can run on any hardware with good speed. VS Code has ultimate features.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    In all honesty, I've not even looked back at any of these alternatives since switching to Microsoft Visual Studio Code a few years ago, there simply isn't the need. For all I know they're all absolutely fantastic, but at the time of switching (and consistently since) Microsoft …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code stacks up favorably against PhpStorm for developing PHP- and JS-based web projects. In our company, developers generally choose from one of these two applications, based primarily on personal taste. Both are great for development and debugging our …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    The main plus for me was the speed, sleek UI, and the memorable shortcuts for VS Code. Also the smart auto-complete as well as version management (Git), Chrome debugging, and the possibility of plugging in multiple language-specific linters for a better code.
    The auto-complete …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code does everything better than the previously mentioned software; it improves visual code and overall application visualization. It is easy to use as everything is at hand with shortcuts allowing to improve development time. It is so lightweight that …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    As I explained above, definitely switch to VSCode unless you are heavily invested/comfortable with the alternatives, in which case it may not be worth it for now. Vim users may differ, but did I mention VSCode also has a highly integrated and mature Vim plugin? I used to be a Vi…
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    We evaluated both Sublime and Atom, and while they are both great tools, they did fall short of the one-stop shop that is Visual Studio Code. The integrations with Docker, Live Share, Azure app services all add to making this a single tool for all our needs. Without having to …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    In my opinion, VS Code is the best option for coding. It works on Windows, GNU/Linux, and macOS. Moreover, there's a great team/community behind the scene to maintain this program.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    It is more advanced, it has more features and is a lot better than its competitors in terms of everything.
    It stands the best among all the similar software of this type.
    Incentivized
    Sublime HQ
    Chose Sublime Text
    While Microsoft Visual Studio Code has a lot more to offer, it can sometimes be a little too much and get too complicated. I like to keep things simple in text editors which makes Sublime Text my preferred editor. There are a lot of packages that can be installed for Sublime …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Sublimes text is comparable with the Microsoft Visual Studio Code and NotePad++. However, VS code is far better than [Sublime Text] in terms of the plugins and extensions available in the market. [...] Sublime consumes [...] less memory, compared to the VS code, [which …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    TextEdit is a very basic, plain text editor. I rarely use it. Even when it's overkill, Sublime Text is still my go-to editor for plain text files.
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Easier to use, runs very solid (especially on Mac OS). Syntax coloring is the best. Possibilities to add plugins and custom things is huge. Connection with Github works great (never tested this with the other tools though).

    Also, our company has chosen this tool so at my current …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Sublime Text is free and offers a cleaner coding interface. Even if I forgot to save updates to a file, the next time I open it, it's still present. Sublime Text boots faster than the other text editors and is also easy to deploy. Memory consumption of Sublime Text is lesser …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Compared to any other text editor I've used, Sublime Text has the best user interface. On Macs, Windows, and Linux, Sublime Text makes editing easier. When I couldn't use Notepad++ on a Windows machine, I used Sublime Text instead. My colleagues started using Sublime Text, so I …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Sublime Text has a bit more flexibility and doesn't take up as much space or memory as some of the larger IDEs. Notepad++ is customizable too, but Sublime Text is better suited for code editing in my experience.
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Visual Studio Code was honestly a tough competitor to Sublime for multi-language projects, and ultimately edged it out for some of the teams I worked with. It's library functionality was far superior, it is 100% open source vs ads, and it has a similar speed. PyCharm and WebStor…
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Before using Visual Studio Code, we were using Adobe Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver worked well back then, but we were amazed at how much faster and more intuitive Sublime Text was. That's the time that we got into SASS, which made things go so much faster and more efficiently. Also …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    I think Sublime is the most efficient text editor in terms of memory usage, especially compared to VSC. However, VSC is feature-rich and has almost all the features of IDE such as debugging tools and IntelliSense. These features are missing in sublime. There are plugins to …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Sublime Text has a better UI compared to any other text editors I have used. Easier to edit text on Sublime Text, even on Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems.
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    For users who care a lot about performance (and also battery usage), ST3 is going to win almost every time because its natively built on whatever OS you are running on whereas VSCode is built on top of Electron, which is widely known to have poor performance. As an anecdote, on …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Sublime Text is powerful, stable, versatile, and lightweight. It's also very affordable, with straightforward licensing terms. Many of the other options that we explored met some of these qualifications, but only Sublime Text checks all of those boxes. For example, NetBeans and …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Visual Studio Code is nice from a development standpoint in that it offers many of the features of Sublime Text with the addition of an integrated terminal. Brackets likewise offers some of the benefits of Sublime Text with some added HTML specific tools. Both of these …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    It's been the smoothest and cleanest product
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    The easy to use, user-friendly interface is the feature that I like the most.
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    It has tons of plugins, themes, and fonts which help developers write efficient well-tested code. It works with all languages which gives developers [the ability] to choose any language they want to develop applications in. It is easy to use and doesn't consume lot of memory …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Sublime Text does not provide as comprehensive of a development environment as PhpStorm or Visual Studio IDE. On the other hand, it does not take up nearly as much in system resources, so it is very convenient to use when opening many files or directories for lighter editing. …
    Incentivized
    Chose Sublime Text
    Most programming text editors have everything a programmer needs. There are differences with options/plugins/setup/prices, but I choose Sublime because it is well supported and widely used.
    Incentivized
    Apple
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    70 Answers
    90%
    Would buy again
    26 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    69 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    26 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    70 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    29 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    50 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    17 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    63 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    23 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeSublime TextTextEdit
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    Medium-sized Companies
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    Score9.8 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeSublime TextTextEdit
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (104 ratings)
    9.1
    (56 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.4
    (21 ratings)
    8.9
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.7
    (23 ratings)
    9.3
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeSublime TextTextEdit
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    As a general workhorse IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio Codee is unmatched. Building on the early success of applications such as Atom, it has long been the standard for electron based IDEs. It can be outshone using IDEs that are dedicated to particular platforms, such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code for .net and the Jetbrains IDEs for Java, Python and others. For remote collaborative development, something like Zed is ahead of VSCode live share, which can be quite flakey.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    My CMS has a small window in which I can edit custom HTML/CSS. It can be expanded some, but not as much as I would like. It also displays all code as dark text on a white background. On a page where I am doing extensive custom coding, it is helpful to see it in a larger window and in a color-coded display so that I don't have to strain my eyes as hard. Especially when I'm trying to scan for specific elements and target issues and so that I don't have to scroll endlessly in a tiny window.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Integrate with the git repository very well.
    • Integrated copilot chat is very helpful to write code snippets and helps beginners to start with coding and development.
    • Great library of available extensions is one of the best features in Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
    • Dedicated Testing option to configure pytest and others are quite handy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    • It is very light and boots up instantaneously.
    • It has tons of plugins that will help you to customize sublime entirely according to your needs and thereby is not bloated
    • Package control is really easy to work with and most plugins can be installed in 2 just clicks.
    • Free version has nearly all the features of the paid version.
    • Its User Interface is simple and makes it easy to located many features.
    • It gives you a ton of control over your ide setting through User-settings where you can customize almost everything.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • The customization of key combinations should be more accessible and easier to change
    • The auxiliary panels could be minimized or as floating tabs which are displayed when you click on them
    • A monitoring panel of resources used by Microsoft Visual Studio Code or plugins and extensions would help a lot to be able to detect any malfunction of these
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    • Plugins are easier to use and less complicated but transferring your license to a new computer isn't as simple as it sounds.
    • Sublime has an automatic file comparison feature, but it's challenging to use and should be improved.
    • Adding the ability to mark or highlight the text with different colors would be an excellent application.
    Read full review
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    Solid tool that provides everything you need to develop most types of applications. The only reason not a 10 is that if you are doing large distributed teams on Enterprise level, Professional does provide more tools to support that and would be worth the cost.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    I love this application. It has helped to improve my work. Also, I became so used to the shortcuts that It's hard for me to change to another editor.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code earns a 10 for its exceptional balance of power and simplicity. Its intuitive interface, robust extension ecosystem, and integrated terminal streamline development. With seamless Git integration and highly customizable settings, it adapts perfectly to any workflow, making complex coding tasks feel effortless for beginners and experts alike.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    This is a programmers tool. As such a lot of the features and benefits are lost on a non-technical user. To get the most out of the tool you need to have a basic crash course in how it works and what it can do. The documentation and community are good, but it takes a bit of time to get up to speed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    Overall, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty reliable. Every so often, though, the app will experience an unexplained crash. Since it is a stand-alone app, connectivity or service issues don't occur in my experience. Restarting the app seems to always get around the problem, but I do make sure to save and backup current work.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    No answers on this topic
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty snappy in performance terms. It launches quickly, and tasks are performed quickly. I don't have a lot of integrations other than CoPilot, but I suspect that if the integration partner is provisioned appropriately that any performance impact would be pretty minimal. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles (unless you start adding plugins left and right).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    It has many handy hacks and shortcuts which enhances its performace.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    Active development means filing a bug on the GitHub repo typically gets you a response within 4 days. There are plugins for almost everything you need, whether it be linting, Vim emulation, even language servers (which I use to code in Scala). There is well-maintained official documentation. The only thing missing is forums. The closest thing is GitHub issues, which typically has the answers but is hard to sift through -- there are currently 78k issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    Never had to use their customer support before. There is ample documentation online so it's straightforward to find a solution to any problem you might encounter. For example, I needed to convert a string of HTML code to a properly formatted HTML file to "modify." Easy to do when there are so many users of the product who have needed to do that same thing before.
    Incentivized
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    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    Visual Studio Code stacks up nicely against Visual Studio because of the price and because it can be installed without admin rights. We don't exclusively use Visual Studio Code, but rather use Visual Studio and Visual Studio code depending on the project and which version of source control the given project is wired up to.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    We've used both Notepad++ and Atom; both are great but nothing really beats the Sublime Text UI; super intuitive and friendly and does everything you need without overwhelming you with stuff you don't. Other options are free, but for our organization, it was well worth the small license cost for the persistent use of a great product.
    Incentivized
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    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Microsoft
    It is easily deployed with our Jamf Pro instance. There is actually very little setup involved in getting the app deployed, and it is fairly well self-contained and does not deploy a large amount of associated files. However, it is not particularly conducive to large project, multi-developer/department projects that involve some form of central integration.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    No answers on this topic
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • Saves money by replacing suites of tools such as Visual Studio, IntelliJ, etc.
    • Speeds development time and developer environment setup time
    • Strengthens code quality with integrated autoformatting and linting
    • Strengths Git practices by keeping version control tightly connected with the code
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sublime HQ
    • Sublime Text has helped me to focus on specific tasks, cutting out the clutter that many other IDEs have. As such, it has helped me be a more productive employee because I don't get dazed by hundreds of buttons. I can focus on just the code.
    • Sublime Text is so affordable that it's a no-brainer to have an extra tool in your toolset.
    • The Search features of Sublime Text are so useful that it has saved me a great amount of time compared to using Find & Replace menus in Xcode, Android Studio, or Eclipse.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Apple
    No answers on this topic
    ScreenShots