The Best Free Microsoft Visual Studio AlternativesTop IDEs & Code Editors like Microsoft Visual Studio
The best free alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio is Visual Studio Code. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to Microsoft Visual Studio and loads of them is free so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting free alternatives to Microsoft Visual Studio are Eclipse, VSCodium, MonoDevelop and Apache NetBeans.
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Microsoft Visual Studio alternatives are mainly IDEs but may also be Code Editors or Text Editors. Filter by these or use the filter bar below if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Microsoft Visual Studio.- IDE
- Free Personal • Proprietary
1280 likes209 Visual Studio Code alternativesVisual Studio Code is a free and extensible code editor for building web, desktop, and mobile applications, using any programming language and framework.
License model
- Free • Proprietary
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Chrome OS
Visual Studio Code VS Microsoft Visual Studio
Is Visual Studio Code a good alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio?
1137 likes161 Eclipse alternativesEclipse is an extensible development platform with runtimes and application frameworks for building, deploying and managing software across the entire software lifecycle. Many people know Eclipse as a Java IDE, but it is much more than that- Eclipse actually consists of over 60...
Top Eclipse Features
Eclipse VS Microsoft Visual Studio
Is Eclipse a good alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio?Comments about Eclipse as an Alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio
maurosoft391hard to use and poorly designed
2Eclipse supports multiple languages, looks good too
8One is for Java and the other is for C#
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320 likes198 VSCodium alternativesThis repository contains a build file to generate FLOSS release binaries of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code - Open Source ("Code - OSS") project, the open source core of the proprietary Visual Studio Code.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Flathub
- Electron
VSCodium VS Microsoft Visual Studio
Is VSCodium a good alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio?Comments about VSCodium as an Alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio
its the same but without the useless features that cause more harm than good
3
125 likes29 MonoDevelop alternativesMonoDevelop enables developers to write desktop and web applications on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It also makes it easy to port .NET applications created with Visual Studio to Linux and Mac OS X maintaining a single code base for all platforms.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- .NET Framework
- Xamarin Studio
MonoDevelop Features
DiscontinuedAs of October 2021, the GitHub repository README has been updated to say "This project has not been built nor maintained since January 2020 and has been archived".
MonoDevelop VS Microsoft Visual Studio
Is MonoDevelop a good alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio?Comments about MonoDevelop as an Alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio
I've used MonoDevelop extensively for C# work in Linux. It can work with Visual Studio projects, and much of the shortcut key mappings match Visual Studio. Support for WinForms is available, but there is no viable GUI layout tool/functionality available. A pity that there's no XAML/WPF support under Linux....
6Has to be built from source before it'll run on Windows.
8gnusenseiMonoDevelop's GUI designer is admirable, I've tried it and impressed immediately with how easy and straightforward it to design a window by drag and drop. Try to compare it with Netbeans', Eclipse's or CodeBlocks' GUI designer you will know what I mean.
0
736 likes109 Apache NetBeans alternativesA free, open-source Integrated Development Environment for software developers. You get all the tools you need to create professional desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications with the Java language, C/C++, and even dynamic languages such as PHP, JavaScript, Groovy, and...
Top Apache NetBeans Features
Apache NetBeans VS Microsoft Visual Studio
Is Apache NetBeans a good alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio?Comments about Apache NetBeans as an Alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio
Kristopher KalishNetBeans is an IDE, but it doesn't work for .NET languages so it's hard to call it a viable alternative.
4brandomettoutFree and Open Source Software. Changing leadership from Oracle to Apache Foundation.
1gnusenseiNetbeans includes built-in GUI designer with drag and drop ability to create desktop applications and they can run on Windows as well as GNU/Linux and macOS.
0
253 likes61 Code::Blocks alternativesCode::Blocks is a free C++ IDE built to meet the most demanding needs of its users. It is designed to be very extensible and fully configurable.
Code::Blocks Features
Code::Blocks VS Microsoft Visual Studio
Is Code::Blocks a good alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio?Comments about Code::Blocks as an Alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio
maurosoft391windows forms are missing and it's poorly designed
0Code::Blocks has 0.1% of the functionality of VS. It looks ugly as well.
0gnusenseiFaster, smaller, and able to make graphical desktop applications by adding GUI designer plugin wxSmith for C++ language and wxWidgets framework. Also, CodeBlocks is cross platform.
0
79 likes25 SharpDevelop alternatives#develop (short for SharpDevelop) is a free IDE for C#, VB.NET and Boo projects on Microsoft's .NET platform. It is open-source, and you can download both sourcecode and executables.
SharpDevelop Features
DiscontinuedUnfortunately SharpDevelop has been discontinued. It is still a viable alternative for VS for versions until 2016, but it doesn't support C# 7.0 as VS 2017 does. See details: http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/WhatsNew.aspx
SharpDevelop VS Microsoft Visual Studio
Is SharpDevelop a good alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio?Comments about SharpDevelop as an Alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio
It's very similar to it and size is very low! { Visual Studio - up to 3 GB / sharp Develop - Only Up to 15 MB in size }
6Only to a certain extent. Lacking many features and is no longer updated.
0lordunknownIt's small, lightweight, specialized on .NET development (but C++ is available too), supports designing both WinForms and WPF and has NuGet support. Perfect IDE for lightweight C# developing (if you don't need to handle a team of 10000 employees working on 5 big projects)
4
Comments about Visual Studio Code as an Alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio
It's maybe not as capable as the real VS. But it's still a great environment and with a couple of extensions it can do a lot of things VS can.
Visual Studio Code is a text editor based on electron.js just like Atom.
Visual studio Code is not a IDE (Integrated Development Environment), it's a text and code editor. So it's more an alternative to Sublime text or Atom.