News Stack Overflow Dev Survey: Visual Studio, VS Code Hold Off AI IDEs to Remain on Top By David Ramel 08/01/2025 It's no surprise that one of the biggest developer surveys in the industry this year ...

The Visual Studio Code product itself ships under a standard Microsoft product license, as it has a small percentage of Microsoft-specific customizations. It’s free despite the commercial license.

With 14 million users, Microsoft's open source cross-platform code editor Visual Studio Code is one of its key tools for keeping developers engaged with its future in the cloud.

Microsoft is adding Visual Studio to its graveyard, but only on the Mac, as it shifts resources to VS Code.