Vercel vs Zed

Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?

The short answer

Vercel is the stronger AI pick in AI Coding Assistants: it has a visibility score of 1.5 versus 1 for Zed, and ranks ahead in 100% of the answers that name both.

Choose Vercel if…

You want the brand AI engines rank higher (1.5 vs 1)
You need SOC 2 Type 2 or ISO 27001:2022 or PCI DSS or EU-U.S. DPF or HIPAA or TISAX Assessment Level 2 coverage
You prefer a larger, established vendor (501–1,000 employees)
Usage-based pricing suits your budget better than per seat

Choose Zed if…

You want a lower entry price ($10 vs $20)
AI answers describe it more positively (50% vs 33% positive)
Per seat pricing suits your budget better than usage-based
Ideal for small teams already on GitHub

AI visibility side by side

Latest weekly run · Nov 3

Metric	Vercel	Zed
Visibility score	1.5%	1%
Change vs last week	New	New
Rank in AI Coding Assistants	#23	#26
Share of voice	0.6%	0.4%
Mentions this run	3	2
Positive in AI answers	33%	50%

The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.

Visibility score trend

Weekly runs over the last 60 days

Vercel 0pp · Zed 0pp over 0 weekly runs.

Engine by engine

Vercel leads on 1 of 3 engines

ChatGPT

3.5%

0.9%

AI Mode

1.1%

Perplexity

VercelZed

Head to head in AI answers

1 engine answers name both brands

1Vercel ranked higher

0Zed ranked higher

Prompt	Engine	Vercel	Zed
Official website of the top AI coding assistant vendors	ChatGPT	#13	#16

Features, pricing & fit

Dimension	Vercel	Zed
Pricing model	Usage-based	Per seat
Entry price	Free; paid from $20 / mo	Free; paid from $10 per seat / mo
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Deployment	—	Desktop editor on Windows, macOS and Linux, with remote development over SSH, WSL and dev containers. Users can run local Ollama models, and API keys for hosted providers are kept on the local machine.
Compliance	SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001:2022, PCI DSS, EU-U.S. DPF, HIPAA, TISAX Assessment Level 2	—
Support	Documentation, Knowledge Base, Advanced Support on Enterprise plan, Sales team contact	—
Founded	2015	2021
Headquarters	San Francisco, CA, United States	Boulder, Colorado
Employees	501–1,000	11–50
Funding	Series A-1 · $863M raised	Series B · $42M raised
Best for	Professional developers, freelancers and businesses building web apps and agents.	Developers who want a fast editor with AI optional, and teams that need org-level control over AI features and data sharing through the Business plan.