Open-source alternatives to Atom

5 alternatives, ranked by a published maintenance score computed from live GitHub signals (fetched 2026-09-04). We flag unmaintained projects on both sides — including Atom itself when the data says so.

About Atom: GitHub's own editor, sunset December 2022 and archived. Its community scattered to successors.

Looks unmaintained since 2023-01-03 — Atom: its repository is archived — development has officially ended. Computed from its GitHub repository, not our opinion.

60,752 stars · last commit 2023-01-03 · latest release v1.63.1 (2022-11-22) · 993 open issues/PRs · MIT · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 25/100 was computed

Last commit	3.7 years ago (archived)	0/40
Latest release	3.8 years ago	0/25
Community size	GitHub stars	15/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		25/100

The alternatives

Zed

90 /100 actively maintained

High-performance collaborative editor from Atom's original creators.

89,755 stars · last commit 2026-09-04 · latest release nightly (2026-09-04) · 3,187 open issues/PRs · custom license · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 90/100 was computed

Last commit	today	40/40
Latest release	today	25/25
Community size	GitHub stars	15/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		90/100

VSCodium

90 /100 actively maintained

VS Code's open-source build without Microsoft telemetry.

33,112 stars · last commit 2026-09-04 · latest release 1.126.04524 (2026-07-11) · 139 open issues/PRs · MIT · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 90/100 was computed

Last commit	today	40/40
Latest release	55 days ago	25/25
Community size	GitHub stars	15/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		90/100

Lapce

90 /100 actively maintained

Fast native editor in Rust with modal editing option.

38,823 stars · last commit 2026-09-04 · latest release nightly (2026-09-04) · 896 open issues/PRs · Apache-2.0 · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 90/100 was computed

Last commit	today	40/40
Latest release	today	25/25
Community size	GitHub stars	15/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		90/100

Pulsar

78 /100 maintained

The community fork keeping Atom itself alive.

4,152 stars · last commit 2026-09-04 · latest release v1.132.1 (2026-05-20) · 339 open issues/PRs · custom license · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 78/100 was computed

Last commit	today	40/40
Latest release	3 months ago	19/25
Community size	GitHub stars	9/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		78/100

Helix

70 /100 maintained

Terminal modal editor with built-in LSP; a modern vim lineage.

46,076 stars · last commit 2026-09-01 · latest release 25.07.1 (2025-07-18) · 1,639 open issues/PRs · MPL-2.0 · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 70/100 was computed

Last commit	3 days ago	40/40
Latest release	13 months ago	5/25
Community size	GitHub stars	15/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		70/100