GitHub Copilot vs Zed: what developers actually say
Based on 1,116 opinions on Hacker News from developers who discussed these two, most of them first-hand users.
Zed comes out ahead on satisfaction: 59 approval against 42 for Copilot, and 57 against 38 over the last 90 days. Its strongest counts are UX (119 positive, 56 negative) and speed (62 positive, 16 negative), while Copilot's code quality count runs negative (38 positive, 93 negative) and reliability is 14 positive against 54 negative. No commenter picked one over the other directly, so the gap rests on aggregate sentiment, and Copilot still draws far more discussion (659 opinions, 535 authors). Copilot is the better fit for editor-integrated completion and existing subscriptions, but 40 people named Claude Code as their replacement and 18 went the other way.
Choose GitHub Copilot if
- Want autocompletion and chat inside VS Code
- Already pay for Copilot and want agent runs across repos
- Need a tool with a large base of user reports
Choose Zed if
- Want a fast standalone editor with strong UX scores
- Drive several agents, diffs, and worktrees from one editor
- Care more about editing speed than deep configuration