Free Microsoft Visual Studio Alternatives
The best free alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio is Eclipse, which is also Open Source. 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 MonoDevelop, Apache NetBeans, Code::Blocks and VSCodium.
Microsoft Visual Studio alternatives are mainly IDEs but may also be Code Editors or Text Editors. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Microsoft Visual Studio.- Free Personal • Proprietary
- Mac
- Windows
- Online
- .NET Framework
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
Eclipse is an extensible development platform with runtimes and application frameworks for building, deploying and managing software across the entire software lifecycle.
Eclipse vs Microsoft Visual Studio opinions
One is for Java and the other is for C#
Eclipse supports multiple languages, looks good too
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- .NET Framework
- Xamarin Studio
MonoDevelop 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.
Discontinued
As 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repository README has been updated to say "This project has not been built nor maintained since January 2020 and has been archived".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 opinions
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....
It is specifically for C# like Visual Studio is mostly used for
Has to be built from source before it'll run on Windows.
gnusenseiMonoDevelop'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.
It provides not only the most similar interface but also the most similar tools
Monodevelop, even though only for .NET languages (as far as i know) is probably the closest to Visual studio I have tried. Also, GTK# is awesome!
.NET functionality, good code recommendations
Development Environment, Tooling Platform and Application Framework.
Discontinued
Python plugin for NetBeans (nbPython) has been discontinued since v8.1
Apache NetBeans vs Microsoft Visual Studio opinions
gnusenseiNetbeans 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.
brandomettoutFree and Open Source Software. Changing leadership from Oracle to Apache Foundation.
It's for MS-Windows, MacOSX and Linux too! You can make projects independent of the OS.
bigbearNetBeans is an IDE, but it doesn't work for .NET languages so it's hard to call it a viable alternative.
- Free • Open Source
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
Code::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 vs Microsoft Visual Studio opinions
gnusenseiFaster, 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.
DayOSIt is faster than VS and the plugins make it a little better, but it doesn't look as good visually.
Code::Blocks has 0.1% of the functionality of VS. It looks ugly as well.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Electron / Atom Shell
- Code - OSS (vscode)
This 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.
VSCodium vs Microsoft Visual Studio opinions
its the same but without the useless features that cause more harm than good
- Free • Open Source
- Windows
- .NET Framework
#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.
Discontinued
Unfortunately 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 opinions
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 }
lordunknownIt'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)
Only to a certain extent. Lacking many features and is no longer updated.
free and lightweight for commercial use
N0 messy azure , no complex licensing
Very similar IDE for C# and VB.NET.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
Qt Creator is a cross-platform C++, JavaScript and QML integrated development environment which is part of the SDK for the Qt Framework.
Qt Creator vs Microsoft Visual Studio opinions
Found everything in Qt Creator for Linux that is in VS for Windows.
At first, intelligent search ib QtCreator is much better than the Microsoft's IntelliSens. Hot keys combinations are more simple and more intuitive. It looks for me more simple and intuitively clear at all.
It has A lot of really use full tools and you can install many extensions and even support for other programming languages then python,c++ etc
ichimitchDoes not support C# as they believe "it is not widely used enough" pfft
For C++ development, QT Creator is a lot less bloated. It is fast and has all the necessary features. There is just too much unnecessary crap in VisualStudio making it slow as hell when running on a slightly older machine and also takes up gigs of disk space.
IntelliJ IDEA is an integrated development environment (IDE) written in Java for developing computer software. It is developed by JetBrains, and is available as an Apache 2 Licensed community edition, and in a proprietary commercial edition.
IntelliJ IDEA vs Microsoft Visual Studio opinions
This is only designed for Java not .net.
- Freemium • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
Python and Django IDE with refactorings, code completion, on-the-fly code analysis and other features, including version control integration, deployment, integration with issue trackers, and remote debugging.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- OpenSolaris
Lazarus is a cross-platform IDE for the Free Pascal compiler. It tries to offer a Delphi-like programming experience through its own 'Lazarus Component Library' and supporting many platforms like Windows, OSX, Linux, BSD, Android, iOS and more.
Lazarus vs Microsoft Visual Studio opinions
gnusenseiLazarus GUI designer is nice and easy to use. Drag and drop works without much hassles about layouting.
Open Source done entirely in an independent language very like TurboPascal (Delphi).
Because of license agreement, you can create unlimited codes by using Lazarus but VS has limits in license agreement
I like Lazarus and Free Pascal