JetBrains Rider Alternatives for C# and .NET Developers

JetBrains Rider is a cross-platform IDE for .NET and game development. It is very much alive, and since October 2024 it has been free for non-commercial use, as InfoQ reported. The Rider store defines that as learning, open source work without commercial benefit, content creation and hobby projects. Commercial licences cost $169 for an individual in the first year and $519 per user per year for companies.

The choice got narrower for Mac users. Microsoft's retirement page says Visual Studio for Mac would no longer be supported or maintained after August 31, 2024, and points users to VS Code with C# Dev Kit or to Visual Studio on Windows in a VM or Microsoft Dev Box. MonoDevelop, the older open source option, is discontinued as well, as our MonoDevelop alternatives page explains. The six picks below cover Windows-only IDEs, cross-platform editors and the new option of running JetBrains' own C# engine inside VS Code.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Visual Studio 2026

For Windows-only .NET shops, Visual Studio 2026 is the default Rider competitor. It covers WPF and Windows Forms designers, .NET Framework projects, profiling and the deepest Azure tooling, all from Microsoft. The Community page calls the free edition a fully featured IDE for students, open source and individual developers.

The licence rules matter more than the feature list. Community allows unlimited users for classrooms, academic research and open source. Otherwise, non-enterprise organizations may use it with up to five users, and enterprises, defined as more than 250 PCs or more than $1 million in annual revenue, may not use it for anything else at all.

Best for: Windows teams building WPF, WinForms, .NET Framework or Azure apps who want Microsoft's own IDE.

Pricing:

• Community: free for individuals, academic use, open source and non-enterprise teams of up to 5 users
• Professional: $45 per user per month (monthly), or a standard subscription at $99.99 per user per month in the first year, $66.59 on renewal
• Enterprise: $250 per user per month (monthly), or a standard subscription from $499.92 per user per month in the first year

Watch out for:

• It is Windows only. Mac users are pointed to a Windows VM or Microsoft Dev Box on the retirement page.
• Community's enterprise clause catches growing startups. Once a company passes $1 million in revenue or 250 PCs, every developer needs a paid licence, per the Community terms.

Official site: Visual Studio 2026.

VS Code with C# Dev Kit

Microsoft's own answer for C# on macOS and Linux is VS Code plus the C# Dev Kit extension. It has about 18.5 million installs on the VS Code Marketplace and offers a solution explorer, Roslyn-powered language features and Test Explorer support for xUnit, NUnit, MSTest and bUnit. It requires the .NET 10 SDK.

VS Code itself is free and reached version 1.145 on November 4, 2026, per Microsoft's release notes. Compared with Rider, you get a lighter editor and Copilot integration, but fewer refactorings and inspections out of the box.

Best for: Mac and Linux developers building ASP.NET Core, .NET MAUI or cloud services who want Microsoft-supported tooling.

Pricing:

• VS Code: free
• C# Dev Kit: free for individuals, academia and open source, on Visual Studio Community terms
• Organizations: included with Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise subscriptions

Watch out for:

• The listing says it does not support .NET Framework, WPF or Windows Forms projects.
• Commercial teams beyond Community terms need a paid Visual Studio subscription, so the free editor is not free for every company.

Official site: VS Code with C# Dev Kit.

ReSharper for VS Code

If you like Rider's code analysis but not the IDE, JetBrains now ships that engine as an extension. The release post from March 2026 ended a year of public preview and lists inspections and quick-fixes, refactorings for C#, Razor, Blazor and XAML, a Solution Explorer, unit testing and navigation into decompiled sources. It works in VS Code, Cursor and other compatible editors.

The 2026.2 release added a .NET debugger built on the engine Rider uses, according to JetBrains. Heise reported that the extension is also on the Open VSX Registry, which brings it to VSCodium-based editors.

Best for: Rider users who want to keep JetBrains inspections while moving to VS Code or an AI-first fork.

Pricing:

• Free for learning, hobby projects and non-commercial development
• Commercial: paid, covered by ReSharper, dotUltimate and All Products Pack licences

Watch out for:

• The debugger is an initial implementation. JetBrains' debugging post says legacy .NET Framework launches such as WPF can fail and that you must disable C# Dev Kit's debugger first.
• It is an extension, not an IDE, so Rider extras like the database tools and profiler integration are not part of it.

Official site: ReSharper for VS Code.

Cursor

Cursor is a VS Code fork built around AI agents, and since August 14, 2026 it has been part of SpaceX, per its homepage. For C# work, JetBrains names Cursor as a supported host for ReSharper for VS Code, including the new debugger. That combination gives you agentic edits with JetBrains' analysis underneath.

Downloads cover macOS, Windows x64 and ARM64 and Linux .deb, RPM and AppImage, per the download page. Model access depends on the plan, and the allowance refreshes weekly.

Best for: .NET developers who want an AI agent working across a large solution and are willing to pay for model usage.

Pricing:

• Free: limited
• Plus: $8 per month, Grok models only
• Premium: $30 per month, with third-party models at API list price
• Teams: from $30 per user per month

Watch out for:

• The cheap tier is narrow. The pricing page limits Plus to Grok models, and other models are billed at API list price on Premium.
• C# support comes from extensions you add, not from Cursor itself, so test project loading and debugging before moving a team.

Official site: Cursor.

Zed

Zed is the lightweight pick. It is a native Rust editor rendered on the GPU, per zed.dev, and its C# docs say the C# extension uses roslyn-language-server by default, with csharp-ls and OmniSharp as alternatives you set in the settings file.

It suits developers who mainly read and edit code and run builds from the terminal. The Personal plan is free with your own API keys for the AI features.

Best for: Developers who find Rider heavy and want quick C# editing with Roslyn completions and diagnostics.

Pricing:

• Personal: $0 forever, with your own API keys
• Pro: $10 per month with $5 of tokens included
• Business: $30 per seat per month

Watch out for:

• The C# docs do not mention a debugger, so plan on debugging elsewhere.
• Zed needs a DirectX 11 GPU on Windows and Vulkan on Linux.

Official site: Zed.

VSCodium

Some developers leave Rider because they want no vendor account and no telemetry at all. VSCodium is VS Code rebuilt from Microsoft's open source code as MIT-licensed binaries with telemetry disabled, per vscodium.com. The newest build, 1.143.17232 from October 28, 2026, is based on VS Code 1.143.1 and covers Windows, macOS and Linux on GitHub.

For C#, it pulls extensions from the Open VSX Registry. Heise reported that ReSharper for VS Code is published there, which gives VSCodium the same JetBrains analysis that runs in VS Code and Cursor.

Best for: Open source and hobby C# developers who want a free editor with no Microsoft or JetBrains account.

Pricing:

• Free and open source (MIT-licensed binaries)

Watch out for:

• Microsoft's C# debugger will not run here. The VSCodium extensions doc says the C# and C/C++ debuggers and Remote Development only work with the official VS Code build.
• C# Dev Kit is a Visual Studio Marketplace extension, so its solution explorer and test tooling are not part of a stock VSCodium setup.

Official site: VSCodium.

How to choose

When to stay with JetBrains Rider

Stay with Rider if you work on macOS or Linux and need a full .NET IDE, since no Microsoft IDE covers those systems after Visual Studio for Mac ended. Rider also bundles the refactorings, test runner and debugger that the editors above split across extensions. If your projects are non-commercial, the free licence removes the cost question entirely.

Frequently asked questions