What are the best free IDEs for Python?

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plugins available to extend its functionality. See More

Visual Studio Code

Top Pro

Extendable through plugins

Top Con

Embedded Git isn't powerful enough

You can do nothing but to track changes, stage them and commit. No history, visualization, rebasing or cherry-picking – these things are left to git console or external git client. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:MIT

Top Pro

One IDE for all languages

Top Con

Project search limits results

Because file search is so slow your results are limited in order to simulate a faster search. See More

Top Pro

Integrated debugging

VSC includes debugging tools for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript. See More

Top Con

The autocomplete and code check is not as powerful as the one on WebStorm

Sometimes it doesn't tell you if you made a typo in a method name or if a method is not used and several other important features. See More

Top Pro

Updated frequently

There's a new release of Visual Studio Code every month. If you are one of the insiders then releases are daily. See More

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

There's no need to press alt+tab to go to a terminal: it is directly integrated into the editor. Shift+~ is a handy hotkey to toggle the integrated terminal. See More

Top Pro

Python support

Excellent Python plugin, originally created by Don Jayamanne, now hired by Microsoft to extend and maintain the extension. See More

Top Pro

Extendable through plug-ins

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plug-ins available to extend its functionality. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control, guaranteeing speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows. See More

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More

Top Pro

Ready to use out of the box

You don't need to configure and add plugins before being productive. However, you can add plugins if needed but for the basics you're well covered. See More

Spyder's autocomplete features are made possible by a library called rope which gives Spyder powerful autocompletion. See More

Spyder

Top Pro

Powerful autocompletion

Top Con

Not beautiful

The default theme is not beautiful. And there are not many themes. See More

Specs

Multi Language Support:No

Variables created during the execution of a file can be explored and edited through several GUI based editors like a dictionary and NumPy array one. See More

Top Pro

NumPy array editor and dictionary editor

Top Con

Consumes a lot of memory

If you're working with large data, especially arrays, another IDE should be considered as spyder uses at least 200-300Mb of memory. See More

Top Pro

Matlab-like interface

Spyder can plot graphs and provide the list of all variables and a repl See More

Top Con

The documentation is poor when it comes to debugging

Not a lot of information about debugging is available in the documentation. See More

Top Pro

Cross Platform

Based on QT library See More

Top Con

Poor debugging docs

Not a lot of information about debugging is available in the documentation. See More

Top Pro

Syntax Colouring

Top Pro

Code introspection

Top Pro

PyLint integration

Top Pro

Free and open-source

Released under the MIT license. See More

Top Pro

Graph plotting support

Spyder can plot graphs and provide the list of all variables. See More

Top Pro

Good GitHub project

Top Pro

Intuitive interface

Top Pro

Has cross platform support - Linux, Mac, and even Windows

Spyder (formerly Pydee) has support for all of the major operating platforms - Linux, Mac, and even Windows. See More

Top Pro

Enables to write consistent code

Pylint integration enables to check the code for PEP8 style guide and detect errors. See More

Top Pro

Helps you to use documentation

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform and Vim UI in the same box. See More

Spacemacs with Python layer

Top Pro

Combines the best parts of Vim and Emacs

Top Con

Slow startup time

Although configuration is heavily lazy loaded, the starting time of Spacemacs is usually between two and five seconds. Emacs can be run as a daemon though which reduces the clients startup time to a few milliseconds. See More

Specs

Key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces, for instance buffer actions are under b, file actions under f, project actions under p, search actions under s etc... Key bindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions. See More

Top Pro

Mnemonic and consistent key bindings

Top Pro

Support for different languages with layers

At the heart of Spacemacs, the configuration layers group packages configuration into semantic units that can be toggled on and off. The architecture is simple but powerful allowing to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages. Layers for other languages can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. See More

Top Pro

Above average documentation quality

Documentation is mandatory for each new configuration layers and can be accessed directly within the editor in Org format. See More

Top Pro

Community-driven configuration

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit. See More

Top Pro

Customizability

Top Pro

Free/Libre/Open

Top Pro

Gradual learning curve

Evil package is a first class citizen, Spacemacs embraces it from day one. Evil package allows Vim users to be productive very quickly while still allowing regular Emacs users to use Spacemacs. See More

Top Pro

Great support from the community

The community is very active and there is a welcoming gitter chat to ask for questions. See More

Top Pro

Easy to remember keybindings

Key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces. For instance buffer actions are under b, file actions under f, project actions under p, search actions under s etc... Key bindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions. See More

Moving project files from one location to another breaks the project file. See More

Geany

Top Con

The project management tools are weak

Top Pro

Multi-Platform

Is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. See More

Zhou Tianyou's Experience

Though it's not as beautiful( and cool) as Atom and VSCode, but it's faster. See More

Specs

The Windows version lacks the integrated console window. See More

Top Con

Some features are missing on other platforms

Top Pro

Fast and responsive

Opens very fast. Stays responsive even on big files. See More

Top Con

Very configurable

The amount if options can be a bit intimidating. Configuring can take some time. See More

Top Pro

Light on resources

Takes up very little HDD space and RAM. Is rarely stressing the CPU. See More

Top Pro

Very configurable

You can easily change what parts of the main window are shown/hidden. How to deal with spaces and tabs. See More

Search for and install new packages or start creating your own—all from within Atom. Also using apm install command. Great package ecosystem, including packages for linting (pylint, flake8) and connecting to remote kernels (hydrogen). See More

Atom

Top Pro

Built-in package manager and rich ecosystem

Top Con

Speed

It’s a browser-based app (runs on Electron), and is a bit slow to load and sometimes to respond. See More

Zhou Tianyou's Experience

My Atom is the best environment for me to study Python and the syntax themes are much better than VS Code. See More

Specs

Auto Complete:Yes (plugin)

Bracket Matching:Yes (plugin)

Most of the core is written in coffeescript, but the team at Github is transitioning to ES6 (the modern edition of Javascript). See More

Top Pro

Customizable

Top Con

Written in Coffeescript

Top Pro

Works everywhere/OS agnostic

Looks the same across Windows, OS X and Linux. See More

Top Pro

Very ergonomic (easy access to files, command pallete)

Almost all shortcuts are the same as Sublime Text. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source software

THE open source alternative to Sublime Text. See More

Top Pro

Themable

Top Pro

Under the hood is a web app

Top Pro

Smart autocompletion

Top Pro

Extensive list of packages

Atom has a built-in package manager and an extensive list of packages. Packages are written in CoffeeScript. See More

Sublime Text is known for being extremely fast to start & use. See More

Sublime Text 3

Top Pro

Blazing fast

Top Con

Not technically free (unlimited free trial)

Sublime text is $70 to purchase, but does provide an unlimited free trial. However, the nag window to upgrade can be a pain. See More

Jesse Aldridge's Experience

Straight-forward editor that works for just about any language. Lots of plugins. Lightweight and reliable. Good set of features. Elegant design. See More

Top Pro

Rich plugin ecosystem

Better than Sublime itself is it's community that create plugins for every need. See More

Top Con

Closed source

Top Pro

Low memory requirements

Significantly lower memory requirements than alternatives like Atom, Brackets or Visual Studio Code which run in a webview (or whatever the correct terminology is), which can make a difference when working on a large project and/or when working on lots of files simultaneously. See More

Top Pro

Works everywhere/OS agnostic

Looks the same across Windows, OS X and Linux. See More

Top Pro

Very ergonomic (easy access to files, command pallete)

Top Pro

Customizable using Python

Small Python code snippets can be used to provide functions the plug-ins do not provide. See More

Top Pro

Numerous small but useful features

Autocomplete, copy file path, run current file, view whitespace on highlight, auto highlight all instances of the selected word, fast find and replace across all files -- Sublime has many such quality of life features that are all well implemented. See More

Top Pro

Limited "jump to declaration" functionality for dynamic languages

Moolenaar to be blamed for. If he opened up the development for vim to other bright minds, no fork would have happened. As it is mostly compatible with vim, it is not such a big issue. See More

Neovim

Top Con

Split the VIM community

Top Pro

Powerful plugin model

Vim plugins have always been useful, but tied to specific languages. Neovim's architecture provides better separation between plugins and the core product, so that plugins are completely flexible and can be written in any language. See More

cosmo's Experience

Neovim is everything wonderful about Vim, only better! It's more performant and more extensible. These traits are especially important for Python programmers since, unlike Vim, Neovim allows for plugins written in Python and other languages, not just Vim script! If you're looking to use Vim as a Python programmer, use Neovim instead. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, macOS, *nix, Android

License:Apache

When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the vim combinations can actually make you SLOWER at everything else. See More

Top Con

Requires Brain Mode Switching

Top Pro

Modern code base

As a refactor over Vim, Neovim has greatly improved its code base. For example, some functionality is handled by libuv, the same code base that powers Node.js. See More

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Top Pro

Async plugin execution

Top Con

Ambiguity in extensive documentation

Top Pro

Fast and light on memory usage

New neovim editor instance starts instantly and you can have multiple editors open at the same time, because id does not require a lot of memory to run. See More

Top Pro

Active development community

Top Pro

Opens a 3Gig text file in a few seconds

Not many editors can open such a large text file so quickly. See More

Top Pro

Comes with some good configurations out of the box

Some typical configurations most of VIM users make are default in Neovim. See More

Top Pro

Work in TUI (Tex User Interface)

Neovim can work on terminal, on a remote server over ssh. See More

Top Pro

UI Agnostic

The core functionality is handled apart from the UI, meaning that Neovim can be embedded into any other GUI system, such as Atom. See More

Top Pro

Built-in terminal emulator

This avoids the user having to make any installations. See More

Top Pro

Better integration with external tools

The core text editor is "headless", meaning it's detached from the user-interface so other programs can hook into it. This enables better integration with IDEs and browsers, where "Vim mode" has typically been a poor substitute because it was a partial rewrite or a partial port at best. One of the advantages of Vim has always been ubiquity and Neovim makes it even more ubiquitous. See More

Top Pro

Still Vim but with upgraded features and some issues fixed

NeoVim was a complete rewrite of Vim, with new features added and underlying issues resolved thanks to the Vim code base. The keybindings and configuration are the same as Vim, so the switch can be pretty simple. See More

While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts. See More

Emacs

Top Pro

Runs over SSH either in terminal or GUI

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Specs

With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties. See More

Top Pro

With many other modes (plugins) you have project management systems and lots of other stuff for developers

Top Pro

Great documentation

Top Pro

Total customizability

Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect. A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza). See More

Top Pro

flake8 for continuous checking

Top Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. See More

Top Pro

It's also an IDE

You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed. See More

Top Pro

Built in support for many version controls like GIT, Mercurial, subversion, CVS etc

Top Pro

Built in app store/package library with easy install

Top Pro

Pep8 support

Top Pro

Self documenting

Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t. See More

Top Pro

Can fetch files via tramp mode over various protocols like ftp and ssh

Top Pro

Easy debugging of python code

You can use pdb inside emacs to easily debug Python code through the M-x pdb command. See More

Notepad++ has built-in support for syntax highlighting for a wide selection of programming languages. See More

Notepad++

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting for a wide variety of languages

Top Con

Windows only

You can't use it cross platform. See More

Zhou Tianyou's Experience

It's like the Windows XP's UI. It's not as good as Geany See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

Notepad++ is a very light program that starts almost instantly. This makes it a great text editor for users that want something that will start the second they open it. See More

Top Pro

Light and fast

Top Con

Windows Only

Top Pro

Portable

You can get a portable version of N++ and put it on a flash drive or your dropbox account and have your editor, configured the way you like, at any computer that you are on. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line editing

While it is disabled by default, when enabled, it is possible to edit more than one line at a time. This is helpful in many situations. See More

Top Pro

User defined language syntax support

You can define your own custom syntax highlighting rules (or add support for others) . See More

Top Pro

Easy to use and admin

Very easy to use and personalize. See More

Top Pro

Plugins Galore

It's ubiquitous, there is a plugin for just about everything (not just PYTHON). So if you need your JSON laid out and decoded whilst you are carving the code, open another tab and crank up the JSON plugin (for example). AND you can write your own. AND it's not just PYTHON. This is a very underrated (free) application. See More

Top Pro

Free under GPL

Notepad++ is licensed under GPL, which means it is free/open source software that you can use freely. See More

Multi Language Support:Y; Language integrations (like inline eval) for Clojure, ClojureScript, Javascript, Python, HTML, and CSS

Light Table

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

Integrated Debugger:REPL

Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources. See More

Eclipse with PyDev

Top Con

Plugins can be unstable

Top Pro

One of the few that can debug Jython code

It handles both Jython and CPython. See More

Jerry Hicks's Experience

Pydev remote debugging for free. See More

Specs

It's useful only if you use python as an additional (secondary) language in your project on Eclipse. See More

Top Con

Just a plugin for python, not full editor

Top Pro

Highly customizable

Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options, Eclipse is very customizable. See More

Top Con

UI can be confusing

There's an overly abundant presence of menus, this forces you to constantly click around the different menu structures. See More

Top Pro

Large selection of plugins

Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins. See More

Top Pro

Good font rendering

Because Eclipse is based on SWT, it uses the native font rendering and thus looks better than other IDEs on some Linux systems, where the Java font rendering is not optimal. See More

Multi Language Support:No

Eric Python IDE

As PaizaCloud runs in the cloud, you can develop and run the Google Home / Google Assistant application, without deploying to another server. See More

PaizaCloud IDE

Top Pro

Google Home / Google Assistant development in the browser

Tsuneo Yoshioka's Experience

I can develop Python program in the cloud without installing python locally. I can even run Jupyter Notebook. See More

Specs

In PaizaCloud, you can sudo to root. So, you can install packages, or run service freely. See More

Top Pro

Terminal with root

Top Pro

HTTP/HTTPS access to any ports

PaizaCloud allow you to access almost all ports for HTTP/HTTPs access. See More

Top Pro

Supports Jupyter notebook

PaizaCloud has Jupyter Notebook support with Python libraries like NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, or matplotlib built-in. See More

Top Pro

Extensible PaizaCloud app

PaizaCloud provides standard application like File manager, Editor, Terminal. But, PaizaCloud also provides the possibility to add or even create new App-for-PaizaCloud using HTML/CSS. See More

Top Pro

No credit card required

No credit card is required for FREE plan. See More

Top Pro

Internationalization

PaizaCloud's Editor or Terminal fully support non-ASCII languages like Japanese, Chinese, European languages. See More

Top Pro

Floating window manager

PaizaCloud provides Floating window manager like Windows or Mac by default. It makes the environment more flexible. PaizaCloud also provides Tab window mode when you want to use the full screen for one purpose. See More

Top Pro

3 seconds instant launch

PaizaCloud launches new development environment server just in 3 seconds. So, you can casually create or destroy server. See More

PyCharm includes sophisticated heuristics for determining what each variable type is and providing autocompletion suggestions for them. See More

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PyCharm Community Edition

Top Pro

Sophisticated autocompletion

Top Con

Memory-hungry

Can use a lot of memory (several GBs), especially when dealing with large projects. See More

GraciousChronos's Experience

The best code editor. Accurate code completion and an amazing environment. I have used spyder, visual studio, and Pycharm. Pycharm was the best in these. It is easy to use, and probably the most intelligent IDE here. Spyder was the worst. Visual Studio is good, but not as compared to pycharm. See More

Top Pro

Excellent refactoring support

There are many refactoring options including renaming and changing signature across entire projects. It also includes the an ability to preview changes before committing and exclude anything unwanted. See More

Top Con

Can sometimes become very slow, freeze, and become unresponsive

It becomes extremely frustrating when you have to wait for the text you've typed to appear in your editor. Furthermore, during these freezes the editor does not always queue what your're typing, so you might have to wait > 15 seconds before you can continue your editing. This quickly affects the concentration of a developer, causing flow interruption and general performance degradation. See More

Faris L.'s Experience

very simple and powerful for Python developers. See More

Top Pro

Excellent debugger

PyCharm can leverage run-time information when running your application with the built-in debugger to figure out what types can possibly be passed to which functions, etc. See More

Top Con

Feature incomplete

Some features are locked behind a paywall. Although if you are a student, you can apply for the Student Pack. See More

CromulentAbyzou's Experience

Indexing when PyCharm starts up can take up to an hour See More

Top Pro

Version control integration

PyCharm has CVS, Git, Subversion and Mercurial integration. See More

NeighborlyPeneus's Experience

1) It's cross platform (that's important for me! they make me use win at work) 2) It's open source or at least free (important for ideological reasons) 3) It installs easily and works quite well without hours of tweaking 4) It provides all the tools I require, and a good deal more What's not to like :-) See More

Top Pro

Framework support

PyCharm supports cefpython and electron.js (with c bindings). See More

Top Pro

Pro features Free for students

JetBrains offers a Student Pack, which gives you a student license and access to the pro features of selected products such as PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA and Php Storm. See More