I ran Zed instead of VS Code for 4 months — here's why I went back

Late 2025 I upgraded to an M4 Pro. Zed 0.180 had just shipped a built-in AI agent panel + collab sessions. I decided: for the next 4 months I’d use Zed as my daily driver and only open VS Code when there was no alternative.

May 2026, I went back. Not because Zed is bad — Zed is actually better than VS Code in places I didn’t expect. But 4 things kept biting me, and one of them I hit every day.

3 places Zed genuinely beats VS Code

1. Speed — not just marketing

Zed opens a 2GB monorepo (50k files) in 1.2 seconds. VS Code on the same project: 4.5 seconds. I measured with time code . vs time zed ., 10 runs, took the median.

I switch between 4-5 freelance projects × 6 times/day = ~30 project opens. Saving 3 seconds each = 1.5 minutes a day. Small. But the feeling of “no waiting” is the real win — you don’t have a 4-second dead zone for YouTube to pull you out of the flow.

Search-across-files: Zed 80ms on a simple query against 50k files. VS Code 300ms. Both use ripgrep under the hood, but Zed’s UI streams results faster.

2. Multibuffer — the feature I miss most after going back

Zed’s multibuffer = open search results into a single buffer, edit them in place, save all → applied to all files. Like sed -i but with per-file undo.

Renamed a function used across 23 files (different contexts, can’t Find & Replace All because some places keep the old name). In Zed:

1. Cmd+Shift+F → search for “oldName”
2. Cmd+Shift+Enter → open results in a multibuffer
3. Edit 23 spots in one buffer, scrolling like reading a long file
4. Cmd+S → save all 23 files

4 seconds. In VS Code: open each file one by one, or run Find & Replace All and clean up false positives. 15 minutes.

3. AI agent panel that doesn’t lag the editor

Zed Pro’s AI panel runs as a native sidebar pane — no webview, no editor lag while streaming a long response. Cursor / GitHub Copilot Chat in VS Code: every time the AI returns a long answer, the editor stutters slightly because the panel renders through an internal Chromium webview.

Zed AI has one advantage I really value: it understands multibuffers. I say “rename foo to bar everywhere except in comments” — Zed AI returns the diff as a multibuffer, I review each spot in a single view, then accept all or accept per-file. Cursor doesn’t natively do this.

4 things that pushed me back to VS Code

1. Extension ecosystem

VS Code has ~65,000 extensions. Zed: ~400. A 1:160 ratio.

I freelance across stacks: Astro, Laravel, Flutter, Terraform / Ansible for devops. Once or twice a week I hit “VS Code has an extension for X that Zed doesn’t”:

• Astro Tools — “Show All Definitions” in .astro files: VS Code yes, Zed extension no.
• Terraform — heredoc syntax highlight + auto-format: VS Code clean, Zed extension misindents.
• Tailwind CSS IntelliSense — class autocomplete with context: both have it, but VS Code shows color swatches in the autocomplete preview, Zed doesn’t.

Across 4 months, I spent ~20 hours on workarounds for Zed extension gaps. Not nothing.

2. Remote development over SSH

VS Code Remote-SSH is the best remote-dev tool I’ve used. code --remote ssh-remote+vps /srv/app — open a remote folder as if local, terminal runs on the remote, debugger runs on the remote. Setup: 30 seconds per new VPS.

Zed remote dev (0.190, April 2026): needs zed-server installed on the remote. Doesn’t yet support jump hosts via ProxyCommand in ~/.ssh/config — and half my VPSes sit behind a bastion. Worked around it with ssh -L port forwards by hand.

90% of my freelance bugs need me to SSH into a VPS. VS Code Remote just works. Zed needs ~30 minutes of setup per VPS × 8 VPSes = 4 hours of my life I won’t get back.

3. Debugger — VS Code wins on breadth

VS Code has a debugger for nearly every language via DAP: Node, Python, Go, Rust, Java, PHP, Ruby, .NET, C++. Set breakpoint, F5, done.

Zed 0.190 (April 2026) added DAP — TypeScript debug runs fine, Python fine. But Java is rough (adapter not stable), PHP Xdebug needs hand-config. When the freelance project is Laravel + Xdebug, I don’t have hours to fight tooling.

4. Settings sync via account

VS Code’s Settings Sync (via Microsoft / GitHub account): new laptop, sign in, 2 minutes later all extensions + settings + keybindings + UI state are back.

Zed: settings are clean JSON5 with comments (nice!) — but sync means symlinking via a dotfiles repo on GitHub. Manual. New machine setup or onboarding a junior is high friction.

When to pick Zed, when to stick with VS Code

Pick Zed if:

• Primary stack is Rust / Go / TypeScript / Python — Zed’s extensions are solid for those four
• Mostly local workflow — little or no SSH
• You want real-time collab in the editor (Zed Channels)
• You hate heavy editors (Electron fatigue) even on a strong machine

Stick with VS Code if:

• Freelancing across stacks, touching 3-4 languages per week
• Heavy remote dev (SSH, containers, WSL, devcontainers)
• Need solid Java / PHP / .NET / Ruby debuggers
• New-machine setup speed matters — settings sync saves hours

Closing

4 months on Zed taught me: editor speed isn’t everything. An editor 3x faster but missing the one extension I need for a freelance project → one evening, 2 hours setting up a workaround. The math reverses.

I still open Zed for 3 things:

1. Browse a new codebase — open project, read, no extensions needed. Zed’s exploration speed feels great.
2. Big refactors that need multibuffer — rename across files, commit, close. Back to VS Code.
3. Pair coding via Zed Channels — better than Live Share, which sometimes has 200ms lag.

VS Code isn’t the best editor of 2026 — it’s heavy, still Electron, still needs a restart after extension updates. But for a multi-stack freelance dev, it’s the editor that drags you down the least.

Next time someone asks “is Zed ready to replace VS Code” — short answer: not yet, but close. 1-2 more years, especially if Zed’s extension ecosystem matures and remote SSH gets first-class — and the answer changes.

I’ll re-check at Zed 1.0 stable. Hopefully the answer flips then.

Sources

• Zed Editor docs and release notes (zed.dev). Versions tested: 0.180 (Jan 2026) → 0.190 (Apr 2026).
• VS Code release notes (code.visualstudio.com). Reference versions: 1.95 (Oct 2025) → 1.99 (Apr 2026).
• Zed DAP roadmap announced on GitHub Zed Industries repo, “Debugger v1” milestone, March 2026.
• Extension counts: VS Code marketplace public stats, Zed extension registry at zed.dev/extensions.