What is VSCodium used for?

VSCodium provides community-built binaries of Visual Studio Code without Microsoft branding, telemetry or proprietary licensing. It is a good fit for using a VS Code style editor without telemetry and standardizing on a freely licensed IDE build.

Is VSCodium open source?

Yes. VSCodium is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at VSCodium/vscodium and is written mainly in Shell.

Yes. VSCodium is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What is VSCodium an alternative to?

VSCodium is an open-source alternative to Sublime Text, WebStorm, Visual Studio and IntelliJ IDEA. Other open-source alternatives to Sublime Text include Visual Studio Code, Zed and Neovim.

Is VSCodium actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to VSCodium was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is 1.135.06055, published on 9 September 2026. The project has 33k stars on GitHub.

VSCodium: open-source alternative to Sublime Text, WebStorm

About VSCodium

VSCodium is a repository of scripts that automatically build Microsoft's open-source vscode source code into freely licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration. The maintainers stress that it is not a fork. The result is a code editor and IDE that feels like Visual Studio Code but drops the Microsoft branding, telemetry and the licensing terms of Microsoft's own distribution.

Releases come as stable and insiders builds and can be installed through Homebrew, WinGet, Chocolatey, Scoop, Snap, Flatpak, the Arch User Repository, or apt, dnf and zypper repositories, as well as deb, rpm and tar downloads. The build scripts are written in Shell and published under the MIT license, so anyone can inspect how the binaries are produced. Extensions are a common area of difference, so review the project's notes before relying on a specific one.

Key features

Free-licensed builds of VS Code
No Microsoft branding or telemetry by default
Stable and insiders release channels
Install via Homebrew, WinGet, Snap and more
Transparent shell-script build process
Windows, macOS and Linux packages

Good fit for

→Using a VS Code style editor without telemetry
→Standardizing on a freely licensed IDE build

Built with: Shell
Tags: vscode; code-editor; ide; telemetry-free; open-source; floss; editor; developer-tools

VSCodium: questions and answers

What is VSCodium used for?: VSCodium provides community-built binaries of Visual Studio Code without Microsoft branding, telemetry or proprietary licensing. It is a good fit for using a VS Code style editor without telemetry and standardizing on a freely licensed IDE build.
Is VSCodium open source?: Yes. VSCodium is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at VSCodium/vscodium and is written mainly in Shell.
Is VSCodium free?: Yes. VSCodium is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What is VSCodium an alternative to?: VSCodium is an open-source alternative to Sublime Text, WebStorm, Visual Studio and IntelliJ IDEA. Other open-source alternatives to Sublime Text include Visual Studio Code, Zed and Neovim.
Is VSCodium actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to VSCodium was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is 1.135.06055, published on 9 September 2026. The project has 33k stars on GitHub.