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An open-source alternative to GitHub Codespaces

code-server is the one project in our catalog listed as a replacement for GitHub Codespaces. It is code editors software with 79.7K GitHub stars. Below is how it measures against the questions people usually ask first.

code-server

Code editors

Run VS Code on a server and code from any browser or tablet.

code-server is VS Code running on a server and opened in a web browser. Your code, tools and terminal stay on the remote machine, and any device with a browser becomes the screen and keyboard. It is built for individuals; the same company's separate product, Coder, covers remote development environments for teams.

  • Open the same VS Code setup from any device with a browser, including an iPad installed as a home-screen app.
  • Move builds, tests and downloads to a server (the docs recommend at least 2 CPU cores and 1 GB of RAM).
  • Install with one script, a Linux package or the Docker image, and add extensions from the Open VSX registry.

What people use it for

Code from an iPad or Chromebook

Install code-server on a cloud VM and put it behind HTTPS with Caddy or NGINX and a free Let's Encrypt certificate. Open the address in Safari on the iPad and choose Add to Home Screen to get a full-screen editor.

Give a thin laptop a bigger machine

Run the install script on a Linux server with plenty of CPU and memory, forward port 8080 over SSH and open 127.0.0.1:8080 in your browser. Compilers, tests and downloads run on the server, and the laptop only shows the editor.

Keep one development environment everywhere

Start the codercom/code-server Docker image with your project folder mounted at /home/coder/project. Install the same extensions with code-server --install-extension, and every browser you connect from sees the same tools and settings.

79.7K starsMITTypeScriptLatest release 2 days agoWebsite ↗Full profile →

Fact checklist

The same questions the pages with more alternatives let you sort by, answered for code-server.

  • Permissive licence (MIT, Apache, BSD)Licence: MIT (permissive)
  • Open-source licence (copyleft or permissive)Licence: MIT (permissive)
  • Released in the last 90 daysLatest GitHub release Oct 29, 2026 (2 days ago)
  • Does not meet: Gaining stars this weekNot enough star history yet to tell
  • Written in TypeScriptMain language on GitHub
  • Does not meet: Recommended in a stackNot in any of our stacks yet

Data from GitHub and our catalog. Every listing is hand-approved. List prices are what the vendor publishes, not a quote, and self-hosting has its own running costs.