Open source alternatives to Cursor

By GitHub stars it is Zed, with 94,960 stars and a commit on 13 Nov. Choose Zed when you want an editor that stays free on your own API keys or agents, with AI you can turn off. Next come Tabby (33,936 stars).

Yes. The code of all 2 is public under GPL 3.0 or later or Apache 2.0, so you can use them with no licence fee. Running one yourself costs the server and your time to look after it, and some makers also sell a hosted plan.

Start from the job you use Cursor for. Choose Tabby when you want tab completion inside the VS Code, JetBrains or Vim setup you already use, served from your own GPU.

All 2: Zed and Tabby. Each tool's page says what it needs to run.

1 of the 2 we track had a commit in the last 30 days, among them Zed. The quietest is Tabby, last changed on 30 Jun. A recent commit shows the project is kept up, not that it will stay that way.

GPL 3.0 or later (1), Apache 2.0 (1). MIT, BSD and Apache let you change and reuse the code freely. GPL and AGPL ask you to share your changes under the same licence when you give the software to others, and AGPL also counts letting people use it over a network.

The hosting. Cursor's maker runs the servers for you; with an open source tool the updates, backups, security fixes and support are yours, unless you take the maker's hosted plan. Features differ too, so check what each one imports and exports before you move your data.