Aider vs Zed
Read from each vendor’s own pages last night, so it does not go stale the way a written comparison does.
Measured — counted from real repositories, nightlyAsserted — read from the vendor docs, dated
| Compared on | Aider | Zed |
|---|---|---|
| Asserted — what each vendor publishes about itself | ||
| Category | CLI agent | IDE |
| Vendor | Aider AI | Zed Industries |
| Status | Active | Active |
| How it charges | Free | Hybrid |
| Entry price | Free | Free, then $10 / mo |
| Plans | No named tier on Aider AI's pricing page could be read with a price beside it. |
|
| Default model | None — you choose | None — you choose |
| Your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Source | Open source · Apache-2.0 | Open source · GPL-3.0 |
| Measured — counted on the last nightly run | ||
| Stars | 47.9K | 87.9K |
| Maintenance | 75/100 | 94/100 |
| Days since last push | 72 | 0 |
| Top model in it | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash · $0.17 | not measured |
| Its volume | 765M tokens | not measured |
What has changed on either of them
1 entry| What changed | Kind | Was, and is now | Confidence | Occurred |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed changed the quota wording on its pricing pageZed | Quota change | limits 5 tokenlimits 5 token, unlimited accepted edit predictions, unlimited edit predictions, unlimited edit predictions role-based, unlimited use with your api keys or | low |
