What are the best C# IDEs?

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11

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1.2K

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May 4, 2021

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Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 2 of 7 OptionsWhy?

Best C# IDEs	Price	Platforms	Bracket Matching
94 JetBrains Rider	€139/First Year	-	-
92 Visual Studio	Free / paid	Windows Mac	yes
89 Visual Studio Code	FREE	Windows, macOS, Linux	-
87 MonoDevelop	Free	Windows Linux Mac	-
-- browxy	Free	-	yes

See Full List

Visual Studio

Top Pro

Official IDE developed by Microsoft

If a project type or a platform is available for C#, it's available in Visual Studio. Some IDEs and code editors may cover some project types, but Microsoft always starts with VS. If you work with a cross-platform technology like ASP.NET MVC, it matters less. If you work with Windows-only technologies like UWP or WPF, you have no choice really. See More

Top Con

Slow

Visual Studio is very slow if you don't have a decent system, but even then it can still be slow. Once you get past the first few minutes of slowness, it runs fine, but this should not be acceptable for a professional-grade IDE. This can be caused by a multitude of factors, such as extensions. See More

SociableCheimon's Experience

its pretty easy See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows Mac

Bracket Matching:yes

Git:yes

Integrated Debugger:yes

Top Pro

Free Community edition

Community edition is almost Pro edition, with just a few exceptions. Unlike old Express editions, it supports plugins. See More

Top Con

No Linux version

PatientNerio's Experience

Working with VS since version 2012. VS2019 is super fast, and is excellent for complex solutions (100+ projects, 100+ unit tests), and supports many different payloads (python, react, react-redux, asp.net, j#, c++, c, unit tests boost/google/MStest etc), including cross platform (linux in particular). Support from MS for bugs/features is good, extensions and packages are also good. There is also an excellent integration with git and cloud (Azure). I prefer it to VScode, which I prefer for its simplicity to Jetbrains products for c#, python, etc, but those are excellent too. See More

Top Pro

Amazing coverage over languages

Supports many types of C, and java, as well as ruby and python. See More

Top Con

Professional pricing is a bit steep

The professional edition's pricing is endearing since it costs more than IntelliJ, however, you wouldn't need that if you're not developing for a enterprise. See More

Lewis Crichton's Experience

It's Visual Studio, what else do I have to say about it? It's the best IDE for any .NET language. With a variety of extensions, it can easily be adapted to do any task that your developer life desires. See More

Top Pro

Excellent and broad range of plugins

The plugin development ecosystem is very mature and covers a lot of use cases. For example, it is often easy to find a plugin which allows you to have the keybindings of your preferred editor. See More

CourteousBragi's Experience

its the best See More

Top Pro

Partial cross-platform support

Visual Studio runs on Windows and macOS, so even if you develop on a Mac you can still develop with Visual Studio. See More

EncouragingMarzyana's Experience

just awful, VS Code is better in every single way. I even use it for c++ although I have to console compile but I still prefer it any day over this garbage! See More

Top Pro

It can run c#, c++, etc.

You can use too many programming lang. And you can select them! Like "I want to do this, not this". See More

Chris Bordeman's Experience

I don't understand how anyone could possibly not rate VS #1 for C#. It supports every possible kind of C# development, every project type and target. It's Windows only. of course, but on the platform for which it's built, it's clearly the winner. See More

Top Pro

Supported by ReSharper and other plugins

Code productivity tools improve code editing experience greatly, provide static code analysis, refactorings, navigation etc. They are considered by many developers as essential. See More

TolerantBaalatGebal's Experience

yes See More

Top Pro

Cloud storage

Your Visual Studio Online account gives you a place to store your code, backlog, and other project data with no servers to deploy, configure, or manage. See More

VigorousDadhikra's Experience

Great user interface See More

Top Pro

Product backlog

In agile development teams one really needs features such as product backlogs where you can assign features to team mates and track their progress on them. VS provides a web based interface for you to track your team's complete progress on the project. See More

HonorableTrebaruna's Experience

The best thing about VS is it can run c# programs in "cmd". It is recommendation. :) See More

Top Pro

Fast-paced development iteration

Fast-paced development iteration from the Microsoft team, with new versions and fixes almost every week. See More

IntellectualAstraea's Experience

since 2002 See More

Top Pro

Comes With the .NET Framework

Zhou Tianyou's Experience

It is free and seems a little bit faster than Rider(on my computer). See More

Top Pro

Fast

PrivateTelipinu's Experience

A little bit faster than rider (on my win10 system) and is free(while rider is paid) See More

Top Pro

Time travel in debugging

PerseveringAkurra's Experience

The best IDE...period See More

Top Pro

Good support and community

João Neves's Experience

Fast-paced development iteration from the Microsoft team, with new versions and fixes almost every week. Very robust, yet sometimes a little slow, specially during startup. High-quality intellisence! See More

Top Pro

Flexible to install/adjust payloads

CuriousGugalanna's Experience

PRO Official IDE developed by Microsoft See More

See All

5 Other Options Considered

Visual Studio Code

Top Pro

Free

It's open source and free. See More

Top Con

NOT A IDE , it's a Code Editor, and incomplete package installation

Not a Full IDE, it is more a Code editor like Notepad++, then an IDE. Can't Import VS 20XX projects without a plugin and even then it's hit or miss. You need to install extras if you want support for a number of basics or even some requirements for the things you want to do. See More

C0d3r_Games's Experience

Very good game development tools with support for many languages including haxe, which I use most and C# tools are decent. Just takes a while to set up all the extensions, but the community has you covered. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:MIT

Multi Language Support:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

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 Con

Slow launch time

Than it's competitors, e.g. Sublime Text. See More

ConscientiousProvidentia's Experience

This is not an IDE, not ideal for complex C# dev work. Especially when you need to build and test. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Runs on mac, ubuntu, and windows, but not on android now. See More

Top Con

Memory hog

Allegedly, VS Code is "lightweight". Yet, running multiple instances of it at once, you may get many "out of memory" messages from Windows despite 16 GB RAM. (While of course also running other things. The point is the comparison with some other IDEs/editors where running them alongside the same number of other applications doesn't cause Windows to run out of memory). See More

EncouragingMarzyana's Experience

AMAZING! BEST THING EVER! 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 Con

Generalized

VS Code is a general code/scripting IDE built to be lightweight and for people familiar with their language of choice, not directly comparable to Visual Studio in power or scope. See More

IndependentNehebkau's Experience

Its simply the best,the only thing is that you need to find proper extensions.Once setup successfully,then I don't even think that other IDEs stand a chance See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

It has several addons you can add as you need. See More

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

TypeScript integration

There is very solid TypeScript integration in Visual Studio Code. Both are developed by Microsoft and VSC itself is written in TypeScript. See More

Top Con

Has no good default js style analyzer

In WebStorm there is analyzer that checks for warnings and highlight this in yellow, here you cannot find or add it even with plugins. It is possible to have it as errors with linter but while you are actively changing file that's not very nice. See More

Top Pro

High fidelity C# plugin

The Omnisharp plugin is very powerful providing full sln, csproj, and project.json support. See More

Top Con

Weak .net project and .net IntelliSense support

It's best for web applications but not for .net desktop apps. See More

Top Pro

It has gotten really good

All it takes is one stop for all the features many people need. See More

Top Con

A "me too" offering from MS, far behind other well established editors that it attempts to clone

Other IDEs specific to a language often offer better tools for deep programming. 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

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

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 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

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 Con

Very bad auto import

Top Pro

JavaScript IntelliSense support

JavaScript IntelliSense allows Visual Studio Code to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code. See More

Top Con

Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags

Top Pro

Huge community behind it

The ease of getting assistance and finding tutorials is increasing as the community grows. See More

Top Con

File search is extremely slow

It's absolutely not possible to use this tool with big projects given how long it takes to search for files. See More

Top Pro

Active development

It's really nice to see how the code editor evolves. Every month there is a new version with great communication of new features and changes. See More

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

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

Top Pro

Integrated debugging

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

Fast and powerful

VS-Code has the speed of Sublime and the power of WebStorm. Perhaps this is the best software that Microsoft has ever created. See More

Top Pro

JS typechecking

It leverages TypeScript compiler functionality to statically type check JS (type inference, JSDoc types) with "javascript.implicitProjectConfig.checkJs": true option. See More

Top Pro

Good support for new Emmet syntax

Top Pro

Inline definition picking and usages finding

These features allow you to have a glance at code without opening it as a whole in a separate tab. Moreover, editing is allowed. See More

Top Pro

Integrated task runners

Task runners display lists of available tasks and performing these tasks is as simple as a click of the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Support RTL languages

It supports pretty web rtl languages like arabic languages when most of other editors don't support it. See More

Top Pro

Custom snippets support

Snippets are templates that will insert text for you and adapt it to their context, and in VSC they are highly customizable. See More

Top Pro

Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

ESLint integration

ESLint integrates great. You can define your rules trough .eslintrc.* as usual and vs code will autofix your code on save. So your code is always in style. See More

Top Pro

Fast code runner extension

All code can be ran quickly with an a.out file or a code runner extension. See More

See All

MonoDevelop

Top Pro

Free

MonoDevelop is free to download and use. See More

Top Con

Bad formatting

MonoDevelop doesn't offer much in terms of autocompletion and code formatting. Most of the time the automatic formatting that MonoDevelop does is annoying and not really compliant with C# guidelines. See More

SuccessfulMnevis's Experience

Monodevelop on linux is abandonware. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows Linux Mac

Supported languages:C#, F#, Visual Basic .NET, Vala

Visual GUI Builder:Yes

GUIFramework:GTK

See All Specs

Top Pro

Starting up this program doesn't take as long as starting Visual Studio windows 98

Top Con

Destroyed when it became VS for Mac

No updates since 2018. Doesn't compile. It's own basic projects won't compile in it. None of the plug ins work, etc. It's officially "Garbage." See More

Top Con

No longer usable

Not cross platform anymore. has been locked down/locked out by licensing agreements by microsoft. The version up on GitHub fails to compile except maybe for Mac. Would not recommend this, as if you can get it to work, it isn't DotNet/NetCore compatible. See More

Top Con

No longer supported (deprecated since 2018)

Starting with version 4.x, Xamarin rebranded MonoDevelop as Xamarin Studio, but only for the Windows version of the IDE. Stable release 7.6.9.22 / September 21, 2018 See More

Top Con

No database connectivity for Mint

See All

scriptcs + any text editor

Top Con

Not an IDE

It's really the opposite of an IDE. See More

Unity

Top Con

Buggy

Display issues with multiple monitors, particularly external output via laptop DVI/HDMI, and an odd file duplication bug when changing screensavers are the tip of the iceberg here and probably part of the reason Ubuntu have dropped Unity for the Artsy release. See More

Top Pro

Easy access launcher

That is always accessible on the left side. See More

ImmaculateApsat's Experience

why is this even listed as an IDE? It's a freaking Desktop! See More

Top Con

Dead

Canonical has ceased the development of the Unity desktop environment, along with the Mir display server. Future versions of Ubuntu will be shipping with Gnome 3. While branches of these are likely going to be maintained by the community, it's difficult to say how strongly these will last considering they were designed specifically for Ubuntu, they had never reached stable release, and more popular alternatives are already present (Wayland in the case of Mir). See More

Top Pro

Feels very complete

PoliteVulturnus's Experience

I am using IDE for gaming anyway. I have found that it works fine with Visual Studio Community. The two programmes sense when there has been a change in either of them. Easy to use them together. You may be told about Visual Studio Code, but there is an issue with getting the launch.json file to work so that you can debug. That's why I went to the VSC version, which had no issues. See More

Top Con

Not a C# Editor --

Even though it gets put into the C# IDE category because people can't seem to be able to tell the difference between a DE and an IDE. So... this is SO NOT FOR PROGRAMMING. IT'S A Desktop Environment (DE). See More

Top Pro

Unobtrusive and fast

Content focused, it allow you to work and getting things done with no distractions See More

SociableConsus's Experience

it is not ide See More

Top Pro

Appealing to both newbies and power users

FantasticMiach's Experience

this isn't even the game engine, this has nothing to do with c# See More

Top Pro

Best keyboard bindings on desktop

Unity won a recent assessment of productivity for desktop users with the richest collection of keyboard shortcuts. Programs can be easily accessed by clicking on the Ubuntu symbol on the upper part of the launcher, or by pushing the "Windows" button found on most PCs. This opens up a box called the "dash" where users can search by typing in the name of desired programs to open them. See More

CaffeinatedAhPeku's Experience

Who is the "genius" to add Unity GAME ENGINE is list of C# IDEs? See More

See All

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JetBrains Rider

Top Pro

Superior "quality of life" features

Extremely good at filling in all the mindless boilerplate type code while you stay productive. See More

Top Con

Not free

Project Rider has a trial version available, but is not free. See More

HarmoniousElectra's Experience

I've been using it already for 3 months, and I must say that is worth every penny. Auto completion is right on spot, documentation is shown easily by hovering over methods calling, and the refactoring tools are just awesome. Allowing you to easily rename every thing, extract methods, ... See More

Top Pro

New C# IDE based on ReSharper and the IntelliJ platform

ReSharper is a popular Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers. IntelliJ IDEA is a popular and fully featured JAVA IDE. See More

Top Con

Relatively young project

Some bugs are to be expected since it's still a relatively young project. See More

Paul Poloziouk's Experience

Very expansive Very slow Too many information inside written code. This is very bad! See More

Top Pro

Fast performant

Rider has everything you want from a serious IDE, but without the bloat. This results in significantly fast performance in day to day operations. See More

Top Con

Abnormal Key Maps

Though I can install visual studio Key Map, but I can't even find where the plugins are installed for the first time I use it to open a solution. See More

Christopher Stark's Experience

Awesome IDE, way better than Visual Studio, but See More

Top Pro

Multiple runtime support

Project Rider supports the .NET Framework and Mono, with CoreCLR support in the works. It also includes templates for creating new projects, and when you create an empty project, it's literally empty See More

Top Con

No support for dotTrace, dotMemory yet on macOS

Support is promised on macOS, but currently only available on Windows. This means it’s not ideally suited for performance tracing and debugging. See More

WisePilumnus's Experience

It is nice, it has linux support, much faster than visual studio. It feels more friendly. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

As well as running and debugging multiple runtimes, Project Rider itself runs on multiple platforms. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. See More

BrilliantHu's Experience

There is a huge difference between Trial and FREE. Im getting real tire of people confusing or should I say, mis-representing false info to the public by telling them its free when it is NOT, Project Rider is a trial version, not free. See More

Top Pro

Free for Students

With a university email, Rider can be obtained for free. See More

Zhou Tianyou's Experience

Strange Default Key Map See More

Top Pro

Version control integration

Intellij plugins for Git, Mercurial, and TFS plus Local History of files. See More

ModestTumatauenga's Experience

?? je suis perplexe 30 qui sont ok contre 8 qui sont pas ok...et vous le trouvez excellent? ... qui vous paie pour dire ces conneries? See More

Top Pro

Decompile code for any .net library

DaringToutatis's Experience

Cool See More

Top Pro

Supports all the development lifecycle

Project Rider can build MSBuild and XBuild solutions as well as DNX/.NET CLI projects, and allows debugging .NET and Mono applications. DNX/.NET CLI debugging and CoreCLR support are coming. See More

David Tamar's Experience

Rider is an outstanding IDE for .NET and it comes with all that I needed as a C# developer on Linux after leaving Visual Studio and Windows. I use Rider to develop cross-platform desktop applications and libraries on Linux Debian. Some of Rider's amazing features include Resharper, the debugger, the Nuget package manager, full GitHub integration, the editor itself, the comprehensive configuration interface, and the most sophisticated code refactoring system that I've ever seen in any IDE yet. JetBrain's instant support and YouTrack's platform for feature requests and bug reporting is another great reason to prefer Rider. See More

Top Pro

Excellent UI, Features beyond Visual Studio (File Layout just one example)

NiceNidaba's Experience

Great and lightweight with all the power of visual studio with resharper but without the performance penalty. Not much plugin support, and no collaboration like live share. See More

See All

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The Best 2 of 7 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for JetBrains Rider

My Recommendation for JetBrains Rider

Superior "quality of life" features

Not free

New C# IDE based on ReSharper and the IntelliJ platform

Relatively young project

Fast performant

Abnormal Key Maps

Multiple runtime support

No support for dotTrace, dotMemory yet on macOS

Cross-platform

Free for Students

Version control integration

Decompile code for any .net library

Supports all the development lifecycle

Excellent UI, Features beyond Visual Studio (File Layout just one example)

My Recommendation for Visual Studio

My Recommendation for Visual Studio

Official IDE developed by Microsoft

Slow

Free Community edition

No Linux version

Amazing coverage over languages

Professional pricing is a bit steep

Excellent and broad range of plugins

Partial cross-platform support

It can run c#, c++, etc.

Supported by ReSharper and other plugins

Cloud storage

Product backlog

Fast-paced development iteration

Comes With the .NET Framework

Fast

Time travel in debugging

Good support and community

Flexible to install/adjust payloads

5 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for Visual Studio Code

My Recommendation for Visual Studio Code

Free

NOT A IDE , it's a Code Editor, and incomplete package installation

Extendable through plug-ins

Slow launch time

Cross platform

Memory hog

Embedded Git control

Generalized

Lightweight

Project search limits results

TypeScript integration

Has no good default js style analyzer

High fidelity C# plugin

Weak .net project and .net IntelliSense support

It has gotten really good

A "me too" offering from MS, far behind other well established editors that it attempts to clone

Ready to use out of the box

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

Integrated terminal

Embedded Git isn't powerful enough

Updated frequently

Very bad auto import

JavaScript IntelliSense support

Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags

Huge community behind it

File search is extremely slow

Active development

Libre/open source

Great performance

Integrated debugging

Python support

Fast and powerful

JS typechecking

Good support for new Emmet syntax

Inline definition picking and usages finding

Integrated task runners

Support RTL languages

Custom snippets support

Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

ESLint integration