Bolt.new vs Zed AI
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Bolt.new if you want prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser (Supervised agent, freemium); choose Zed AI if you want ai features in the fast, open-source zed code editor (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Bolt.new | Zed AI | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser | AI features in the fast, open-source Zed code editor |
| Type | agent | product-with-agents |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (1M tokens/mo); Pro from $25/mo | freemium · Free (Personal); Pro $10/mo |
| Best for | consumers, developers, smb | developers |
| Deployment | saas | self-hosted, saas |
| Modalities | text, code | code, text |
| Models | claude, model-agnostic | claude, model-agnostic, gpt, gemini, open-source |
| Protocols | rest-api | mcp, function-calling |
| Integrations | Netlify, Supabase, GitHub, Expo | MCP servers, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Ollama, Git |
| Capabilities | 3 documented | 4 documented |
Bolt.new
- +Full dev environment runs in the browser via WebContainers, with the AI controlling filesystem, terminal, and server
- +Generates true full-stack apps (not just UI) and can deploy via Bolt Cloud
- +No local setup; fast for prototyping and iterating by chatting
- -Token-based usage cost can rise quickly on complex or long-running builds
- -Output needs human review and iteration; it is not a hands-off autonomous engineer
Zed AI
- +Extremely fast GPU-accelerated Rust editor with AI built in
- +Open source with flexible model access (bring-your-own-key or hosted) plus MCP
- +Supervised agent with granular control: per-hunk diffs and tool-approval policies
- -Hosted models need a paid plan or your own keys; the free tier caps predictions and excludes hosted models
- -Younger and smaller ecosystem than VS Code
Which should you choose?
Bolt.new is prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser, best for consumers, developers, smb. Zed AI is ai features in the fast, open-source zed code editor, best for developers. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.