I ran a head-to-head performance comparison between VS Code, VSCodium, and Zed on my M3 MacBook Air. For a fair comparison, I disabled VS Code’s extensions since my VSCodium and Zed installs were fresh.
Test Environment
- Machine: MacBook Air M3, 16GB RAM
- OS: macOS 26.1
- VS Code: 1.108.1 (19 extensions installed, disabled for tests)
- VSCodium: 1.107.18627 (0 extensions)
- Zed: 0.219.5 (fresh install)
Cold Startup Time
| Editor | Run 1 | Run 2 | Run 3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 0.75s | 0.53s | 0.52s | 0.60s |
| VS Code (–disable-extensions) | 1.31s | 1.30s | 1.26s | 1.29s |
| VSCodium | 1.32s | 1.16s | 1.15s | 1.21s |
Winner: Zed - 2x faster than VS Code/VSCodium
Memory Usage (Idle with folder open)
| Editor | Total Memory | Process Count |
|---|---|---|
| Zed | 222 MB | 5 processes |
| VSCodium | 1,400 MB | 12 processes |
| VS Code | 3,549 MB | 23 processes |
Winner: Zed - 16x less memory than VS Code, 6x less than VSCodium
File Opening (100,000 line JS file)
| Editor | Run 1 | Run 2 | Run 3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 0.23s | 0.09s | 0.13s | 0.15s |
| VS Code | 1.18s | 1.22s | 1.17s | 1.19s |
| VSCodium | 1.16s | 1.19s | 1.15s | 1.17s |
Winner: Zed - 8x faster file opening
Summary
| Metric | VS Code | VSCodium | Zed | Zed Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Startup | 1.29s | 1.21s | 0.60s | 2x faster |
| Memory | 3,549 MB | 1,400 MB | 222 MB | 16x / 6x less |
| File Open | 1.19s | 1.17s | 0.15s | 8x faster |
Why the Difference?
VS Code / VSCodium are built on Electron (Chromium + Node.js). Each window spawns dozens of processes.
Zed is written in native Rust using their own GPU-accelerated UI framework. No Chromium overhead.
Should You Switch to Zed?
Zed is compelling if:
- You want raw speed and low memory usage
- You do mostly editing (less reliance on extensions)
- You like built-in collaborative editing
- You’re okay with a younger extension ecosystem
Stick with VS Code/VSCodium if:
- You depend on specific extensions (Docker, GitLens, language-specific tools)
- You need deep debugging integration
- You’re embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem
Making Zed Feel Like VS Code
Zed has One Dark theme built-in. Here’s my settings.json:
{
"theme": "One Dark",
"buffer_font_size": 13,
"tab_size": 2,
"autosave": "on_focus_change",
"format_on_save": "on",
"git": { "inline_blame": { "enabled": true } }
}
Run It Yourself
I’ve published the benchmark script as a gist - requires macOS with the editors installed.