Sublime vs. Atom: Which Text Editor Is Best for You?

Text editors are lightweight applications for creating and editing plain text without the overhead of a full integrated development environment (IDE). They're great for quick edits, prototyping, and managing code with minimal distraction. Among the most popular options are Sublime Text and Atom.

Sublime Text is a fast, cross-platform editor built with Python and C++, known for its performance and clean interface. Atom, on the other hand, was created by GitHub using web technologies like HTML and Node.js. It offered deep customization and had an active open-source community. It's now retired, but still in use.

This article compares Sublime Text with Atom's final releases to help you decide which editor fits your workflow, and highlights modern alternatives worth considering.

Note: Atom was officially retired on December 15, 2022, and no longer receives updates, though older versions remain available.

What is Sublime Text?

Sublime Text has been around since 2008 and is considered by many people to be the gold standard of text editors for its performance, slick UI, and useful features. Its most notable feature is the minimap, which gives developers a bird's-eye view of their code while they work.

Since Sublime's first release, many other text editors (particularly Atom) have taken their cues from Sublime. However, being the old-timer does have some advantages.

Sublime's best features embody its philosophy of getting things done as quickly as possible. For example:

• Code highlighting. Sublime features color-coded support for many programming languages, including a number of obscure and specialized languages, like Erlang, Go, Lisp, and Lua.
• Goto Anything. This feature is a super convenient way to open files and instantly jump to particular lines, words, or symbols.
• Multiple Selection. Allows you to change multiple lines of code at once.

One downside to Sublime is that it isn't open source. You can download and evaluate in trial mode, but pricing for the full version comes in at $99.

While development on Sublime seemed to stall for several years, it's picked up again with the release of Sublime Text 4, meaning people should expect more support and features going forward.

What is Atom?

Created by the folks at GitHub, Atom was a hackable text editor built for maximum customizability. Atom borrowed a lot of the UI, shortcuts, and functionality that made people love Sublime. It was retired in 2022.

As a text editor, Atom also came with a few handy features, including smart autocomplete, integrated spell-check, and find-and-replace.

While superficially similar to Sublime, Atom had some significant differences internally. The major one was that Atom was built on web technology. More specifically, Atom was built as a customized version of Chromium, Google's open-source web browser project.

This meant that packages could be written in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, making extending Atom's capabilities as easy as writing a mini web app.

Alternatives to Sublime and Atom

While the Atom development environment is no longer active, there are still plenty of alternative text editors to Sublime and Atom. Here's a brief list of popular choices.

Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

Visual Studio Code, also known as VS Code, is a source-code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Open source and built with Electron, Node.js, and TypeScript, it's similar to Atom under the hood.

However, VS Code is noticeably faster than Atom and includes more built-in features out of the box, such as Intellisense autocomplete. VS Code features a similarly large extension ecosystem and installs with its own package manager.

Brackets

Brackets contains basic support for server-side languages, but it's really built for front-end developers and designers. The addition of visual tools, Photoshop integration, and preprocessor support makes it uniquely well-suited to front-end production work.

Another advantage of Brackets is that it contains more out-of-the-box features than either Sublime or Atom. If you're a front-end developer who wants a text editor that's good to go from the minute you install it, Brackets might be an appealing option.

Neovim / Vim

Vim and its modern successor, Neovim, take a very different approach from GUI-based editors like Sublime, Atom, or VS Code. They're modal text editors designed for keyboard-driven workflows, with a strong focus on speed, efficiency, and extensibility.

Neovim modernizes Vim's core by improving performance, adding better plug-in support, and enabling richer integrations with external tools. While the learning curve is steeper than most graphical editors, many developers consider Vim-style editing worth the investment, especially for terminal-based workflows or highly customized development environments.

Atom vs. Sublime: major similarities

If you're still evaluating other source code editors, you can take a look at the previous similarities and differences between Atom and Sublime. Both Atom and Sublime provide all the features developers have come to expect from a text editor, including:

• Text editing
• Syntax highlighting
• Debugging
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Support for most operating systems
• Active communities on Stack Overflow

If we include add-ons, we can extend that list to cover other popular features like:

• Autocomplete
• Git integration
• Package control
• Debugging
• Snippets
• Popular languages such as Python, Java, and JavaScript

Atom vs. Sublime: What's the difference?

Both text editors are packed full of features, support a wide range of languages, and give you everything you need to start coding. However, there are a few differences. This table summarizes the key differences between Sublime Text and the retired Atom text editor.

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Open vs. closed source

Atom was open source, while Sublime Text is closed source (proprietary). That means Atom had the common benefits of open-source software, including:

• True customizability with the ability to edit Atom's source code directly
• An active open-source community of developers building extensions, plug-ins, and patching bugs
• Continuous updates, developments, and improvements

But keeping your source code proprietary as Sublime Text does is not without its benefits:

• Dedicated services and support
• Tighter quality control of a single development team
• Better security

By keeping its source code closed, Sublime's owners get to reap any performance advantages from its proprietary code without worrying about others copying their technology. On the flip side, they can't grow as quickly as an open-source project, and updates are comparatively limited.

Generally speaking, a main negative consideration for closed-source applications is that they're more expensive. Sublime costs $99, while Atom remains free, but lacks support.

Editing and workflow

When it comes to editing and usability, Atom had a beginner-friendly graphic user interface (GUI):

‍You could click to the Settings tab and modify your preferences right away.

Sublime is bare bones out of the box. It doesn't have user settings unless you change them manually by finding your preferred settings from the list of default settings:

‍It's easy to see how a beginner might be overwhelmed by Sublime's approach to settings.

In the long run, this is a minor detail, as it's also easy to see why a programmer might prefer Sublime's interface. Both text editors have all the features you'd expect, including syntax highlighting, the ability to handle UTF-8 encoded characters, and a customizable appearance.

There are also some slight differences in features. For example, Sublime's Goto Anything feature is a pretty convenient way to open files and instantly jump to particular lines, words, or symbols.

Performance

Sublime remains the clear winner in performance. Built for speedy coding, it handles opening and editing multiple files without slowing down. One Reddit user even noted, "It's something I've installed and used since I first moved to Linux … years ago. It'll always be something I open instinctively when I need to chop some code or work with text. I love how fast it is," reinforcing its reputation for reliable speed.

For those who had previously used Atom, there was a small but noticeable lag in file and upload times if you opened too many files.

Customization: themes, packages, and plug-ins

Both platforms offer plenty of options for tailoring your text editor to your needs. When Atom was actively supported, it had a larger add-on ecosystem and robust API options, but most of those add-ons are no longer maintained, or even available, due to the software being sunsetted.

Sublime Text may not have as many plug-ins as Atom had, but it still features an impressive library of roughly 5,000 packages.

Some of the most popular Sublime packages include:

• Package Control. This is the official Sublime Text package manager for downloading and installing other packages. It's omitted from the initial installation of Sublime, and you'll need to download it separately before getting started with packages.
• Emmet. Primarily for web developers, this package lets you type expressions (abbreviations) similar to CSS selectors and turn them into code fragments with a single keystroke.
• Sidebar Enhancements. It adds useful options to the Sublime Text sidebar including "move to trash," "open with," and "clipboard."
• SublimeCodeIntel. This code intelligence plug-in provides autocomplete capabilities for a variety of languages.

Sublime vs. Atom: the verdict

A good rule of thumb when picking between two great comprehensive text editors is to consider which strength resonates the most with you. With that in mind, there are two ways to look at which text editor is the "best."

For maximum speed at scale

Choose Sublime. While many other text editors have borrowed Sublime's features and elegant appearance, none have matched its performance. Because it's written in C++, it's able to maintain high-performance speed even when working with multiple large files and a number of packages. This has made it beloved by developers who work quickly and jump constantly between multiple files.

For maximum extensibility

Atom was a better bet. It provided a strong, flexible foundation that you could build your dream text editor or IDE upon. But since you can't use Atom reliably long term, you should consider trying out VS Code or Vim, which are also open-source and user-friendly editors that have many similarities to Atom.

The best editor for your coding needs

At the end of the day, the choice between text editors still comes down to personal preference and the type of work you do. A back-end developer may need different tools from someone focused on front-end tasks. Some teams rely on in-house standards that keep everyone on the same editor.

While Atom is officially retired, it continues to see ongoing use. For anyone moving on from Atom, Sublime Text is a reliable, high-performance alternative that supports a wide range of workflows.

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Prices are current at the time of writing and may change over time based on each service's offerings.‍