A free, MIT-sourced code editor for Windows, macOS, Linux and the browser that pairs IntelliSense, debugging and Git with optional AI agents you can disable, swap for your own model, or never sign in to.
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Visual Studio Code is a free, open source code editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux, built around a text editor core that also hosts AI agents able to plan work, edit files, and run commands. It runs on the desktop, on a remote machine, or in a browser through VS Code for the Web at vscode.dev.
Against a plain text editor it ships language intelligence, debugging, testing, and Git support in the box. Against a full IDE it stays narrower, aiming to provide just the tools a developer needs for a quick code-build-debug cycle, and leaves more complex workflows to fuller featured IDEs, such as Visual Studio IDE.
Licensing is the detail most often misread. The downloadable product carries a Microsoft end-user license, while the source lives in the microsoft/vscode repository under the MIT license — two documents governing different things.
AI is now core rather than an add-on. Microsoft has open sourced the GitHub Copilot Chat extension under the MIT license, citing usage: more users are actually using AI features in VS Code than some other features like debugging or testing. The editor still works without it — AI features are optional.
Installing and using the core editor requires no account: editing, IntelliSense, refactoring, the debugger, testing, source control, and extensions all work signed out. Signing in with GitHub attaches a Copilot plan with its models and allowances. A middle path exists — chat with a bring-your-own-key model — but inline suggestions, semantic search, and embeddings aren't available through bring-your-own-key models.
VS Code supports almost every major programming language, with JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, and HTML shipping in the box and others arriving through extensions. On top sit IntelliSense completions, refactoring, multi-cursor editing, an integrated debugger, testing tools, and built-in Git support. Microsoft describes a 50/50% split of the team working on AI versus other features, the non-AI half covering performance, security, accessibility, and Electron updates.
Agentic coding rests on three named concepts. The agent loop is the cycle where the agent uses a language model to reason over context and call tools, repeating until it completes the task, needs your input, or you stop it. A session holds the conversation, workspace, changes, and execution state for a task so that you can pause, resume, and hand off the work. The harness and execution environment decide which tools exist and where they run. VS Code can also discover supported sessions created by other interfaces and harnesses, including Copilot CLI, Claude Code, and Codex.
VS Code supports the built-in Local harness and provider-specific harnesses such as Copilot, Claude, and Codex, and you can bring your own model, including a model that runs locally. Execution environment is a separate axis: an agent works on your machine in a folder or a Git worktree to isolate changes, on cloud infrastructure that returns the result as a pull request, or on a remote machine.
The official site points to 80k+ extensions in the Extension Marketplace. They carry their own terms: those packages are under their own licenses, and not this agreement, and Microsoft does not distribute, license or provide any warranties for any of the third party packages. Model Context Protocol servers extend agents with external tools and data, while the Language Model API, Tools API, and Shell Execution API let third-party AI extensions such as Cline and Roo Code operate as first-class citizens.
Color themes modify interface colors, Settings Sync shares user settings across VS Code instances, and Profiles bundle customizations to switch between or share. Portable Mode keeps settings and data in the same location as your installation, for example, on a USB drive.
The official path is three steps: install VS Code, open a folder or clone a repository, then choose whether to work with an agent or write code yourself. On Windows the installer adds code to your PATH so you can open a folder from the terminal with code .. VS Code ships weekly Stable releases with auto-update, and the Insiders build ships nightly and runs side by side with Stable.
Select Sign In from the title bar or hover the Copilot icon in the Status Bar and choose Enable AI features. If you already have a Copilot subscription for your account, VS Code will use that subscription; otherwise you are signed up for the Copilot Free plan with a monthly allowance of inline suggestions and AI credits. Turning it off is one setting, not an uninstall: chat.disableAIFeatures disables and hides features like chat or inline suggestions, at workspace or user level. If you have previously disabled the built-in AI features, your choice is respected upon updating to a new version, and if you disable AI functionality or never sign in, your data is not sent to the Copilot backend services.
Typing /init in a chat session analyzes your codebase and creates custom instructions to help the AI generate code that matches your coding practices. Agents suit work spanning steps or files: planning and implementing features across multiple files, exploring or refactoring or migrating a codebase, and diagnosing errors and running tests and applying fixes. Control runs through permissions, not trust: you set a permission level to control which tool calls require your approval, and agent sandboxing applies operating system-level file system and network restrictions.
The clearest fit is a developer wanting one editor across languages and machines without paying for it, since VS Code is free for private or commercial use. It also suits teams adopting agents incrementally: because the AI layer is optional, reversible with one setting, and able to run against your own model keys, a team can pilot agents without sending code to an uncleared vendor. Independent survey data supports the safe-default reading. In a 2025 developer survey drawing more than 49,000 developers from across 177 countries, Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio still rank as the top IDEs used by developers; however, usage is growing for new AI-enabled IDEs added this year including Cursor (18%), Claude Code (10%), and Windsurf (5%). Trade coverage reported both maintained their top spots for the fourth year while relying on extensions as optional, paid AI services.
Teams needing the heavier tooling of a full IDE are the main mismatch by the vendor's own framing. Shops standardized on virtualized or shared desktops face a harder blocker, since several such configurations are explicitly unsupported. Anyone requiring a guaranteed support contract should look elsewhere: because this software is "as is," we may not provide support services for it.
VS Code runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows as a desktop application, and in the browser via VS Code for the Web. Supported targets are stated precisely: supported versions of Windows client (64-bit), macOS versions with Apple security update support, and on Linux, Ubuntu Desktop 20.04, Debian 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, and Fedora 36. Linux installs add a requirement of GLIBCXX version 3.4.25 or later and GLIBC version 2.28 or later. Hardware demands are modest: VS Code is a small download (< 200 MB) and has a disk footprint of < 500 MB, with a recommended 1.6 GHz or faster processor and 1 GB of RAM.
| Platform | Supported scope | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Supported versions of Windows client (64-bit) | Windows Server is not supported |
| macOS | Versions with Apple security update support | Typically latest plus two previous releases |
| Linux | Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 10, RHEL 8, Fedora 36 | Requires GLIBC 2.28+ and GLIBCXX 3.4.25+ |
| Browser | VS Code for the Web (vscode.dev) | Browser access without a local install |
| Containers | Dev Containers extension | Server runs in container, client on desktop |
Older operating systems are pinned rather than updated. VS Code version 1.70.3 is the last available release for Windows 7 users and version 1.79 will be the last available release for Windows 8 and 8.1 users, 1.83 was the last stable version supporting Windows 32-bit, and version 1.106 will be the last available release for macOS Big Sur (11.0 and older). Linux releases from 1.86.1 require glibc 2.28 or later. Remote work is first-class: running VS Code with the Dev Containers extension is supported, with VS Code server running in the container while the VS Code client is on the desktop.
The editor is not a paid product. VS Code is free for private or commercial use, with no trial and no credit card required — only a GitHub account. What costs money is AI capacity, billed through GitHub Copilot plans rather than the editor. Copilot Free serves individual developers who don't have access to Copilot through an organization or enterprise, with limited access to a selection of Copilot features and models.
| Copilot plan | Listed price | Positioning |
|---|---|---|
| Copilot Free | Not applicable | Limited features and models for individuals without org access |
| Copilot Student | Free | Verified students; unlimited completions plus AI credit allowance |
| Copilot Pro | $10 USD per month | Unlimited completions, cloud agent, monthly AI credits |
| Copilot Pro+ | $39 USD per month | Higher credit allowance plus premium models |
| Copilot Max | $100 USD per month | Highest individual credit allowance, priority model access |
| Copilot Business | $19 USD per granted seat per month | Central management and policy control |
| Copilot Enterprise | $39 USD per granted seat per month | Larger credit pool, enterprise capabilities |
Two constraints sit outside the price list. Copilot Pro is free for some users, since verified teachers, and maintainers of popular open source projects may be eligible for free access to Copilot Pro. Eligibility for the free tier is also bounded: Copilot Free plans are only available to individual developers who don't have access to Copilot through an organization or enterprise, so anyone already covered by a workplace seat cannot fall back to it.
Paying GitHub is not the only path to AI here. Bringing your own model keys shifts spend to a provider you already use; third-party AI extensions stay supported, and the maintainers state you can continue to use these extensions in VS Code; a local model removes per-token cost at the price of hardware. The trade-off is capability — bring-your-own-key models lack inline suggestions, semantic search, and embeddings. Budget cannot solve every case: Copilot is not currently available for GitHub Enterprise Server.
The most consequential limits are environmental, listed as unsupported configurations rather than rough edges. Running VS Code in application virtualization solutions such as Microsoft App-V or MSIX for Windows is not supported. Neither is running VS Code on a non-persistent virtual machine, on systems utilizing or managing users with FSLogix, nor multiple simultaneous users using the software on the same machine, including shared virtual desktop infrastructure machines or a pooled Windows/Linux Virtual Desktop host pool. Windows Server is also unsupported — a gating requirement for anyone standardizing on pooled VDI.
Support and liability are minimal by design. The software is licensed "as-is." You bear the risk of using it, Microsoft gives no express warranties, guarantees or conditions, and recoverable direct damages are capped at U.S. $5.00. Redistribution is restricted too: you may not share, publish, rent or lease the software, or provide the software as a stand-alone offering for others to use. Openness has a boundary on the AI side: the GitHub Copilot services are not affected and will remain closed source. Open sourcing the chat extension changed no subscription requirement — to use GitHub Copilot, you'll continue to need both a GitHub account, and access to a GitHub Copilot subscription.
Telemetry is on by default, governed by telemetry.telemetryLevel across all, error, crash, and off, where off will silence all telemetry events from VS Code going forward. Two caveats matter: telemetry information may have been collected and sent up until the point when you disable the setting, and the setting does not reach extensions, which may be collecting their own usage data. Disabling usage telemetry also costs experimentation, so the rollout of new features to you might be delayed until the feature is generally available, and experiments can be switched off independently with workbench.enableExperiments. For the free tier, telemetry in your free version of GitHub Copilot is currently enabled, and by default, code suggestions that match public code are allowed. Data-subject access has an acknowledged gap, because VS Code does not have a 'sign-in' experience that would uniquely identify a user, relying instead on a hash of the network adapter NIC on the desktop and a randomly assigned UUID on the web. For GDPR, Microsoft makes the commitments in the European Union General Data Protection Regulation Terms of the Online Services Terms to all customers effective May 25, 2018.
Yes. VS Code is free for private or commercial use, and you may use any number of copies of the software to develop and test your applications, including deployment within your internal corporate network. Cost appears only with a paid Copilot plan.
Partly. Source Code for Visual Studio Code is available at the microsoft/vscode repository under the MIT license agreement, while the downloadable product carries a separate Microsoft license. The Copilot Chat extension is open sourced too, but the Copilot services remain closed source.
Visual Studio Code is a streamlined code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running, and version control, aiming to provide just the tools a developer needs for a quick code-build-debug cycle.
Yes, via chat.disableAIFeatures, at either workspace or user level. If you disable AI functionality in VS Code or if you don't login to your Copilot subscription from VS Code, your data is not sent to the Copilot backend services.
No. You don't need an account to install VS Code or use its core editor features. An account connects a Copilot plan; without one you can still use chat with a bring-your-own-key model.
The built-in Local harness plus provider-specific harnesses such as Copilot, Claude, and Codex, with supported language models or one you bring yourself, including a local model.
Often not. Non-persistent virtual machines, FSLogix-managed systems, pooled Virtual Desktop host pools, App-V or MSIX virtualization, and Windows Server are listed as unsupported. Running VS Code in a virtual machine environment requires a full operating system.
You are pinned to an older build rather than blocked. Version 1.70.3 is the last release for Windows 7 and 1.79 for Windows 8 and 8.1, and 1.106 the last for macOS Big Sur and older. Linux builds from 1.86.1 need glibc 2.28 or later.
