Bluefish Reviews & Product Details

Bluefish is a robust, open-source text editor tailored for programmers and web developers, offering a versatile platform for creating websites, scripts, and code across various programming and markup languages. Designed to bridge the gap between simple text editors and full-fledged integrated development environments (IDEs), Bluefish provides a lightweight yet feature-rich environment that is both fast and easy to learn. Key Features and Functionality: - Multi-Language Support: Bluefish offers syntax highlighting and auto-completion for 47 different programming and markup languages, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and C. - Advanced Editing Tools: Features such as code folding, auto-recovery, and a code-aware spell-checker enhance the coding experience. - Project Management: Supports multiple projects with the ability to open multiple files simultaneously, facilitating efficient workflow management. - Remote File Access: Integrates with GNOME Virtual File System (GVfs) to enable seamless editing of files over FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and more. - Customizable Interface: Offers a user-friendly interface with configurable toolbars and dialogs, allowing users to tailor the environment to their preferences. Primary Value and User Solutions: Bluefish addresses the needs of developers seeking a powerful yet lightweight editor that supports a wide range of programming and markup languages. Its extensive feature set, including advanced editing tools and project management capabilities, streamlines the development process, enhancing productivity. The ability to access and edit remote files directly within the editor simplifies workflows for developers working on web projects. By providing a customizable and efficient coding environment, Bluefish empowers developers to focus on writing quality code without the overhead of more complex IDEs.

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Bluefish Editor

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Bluefish Community

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Best-of-Breed

Value at a Glance

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Perceived Cost

$$$$$

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User Insights

Average based on 51 real user reviews.

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Bluefish Reviews FAQs

Generated using AI

Last updated: Nov 04, 2026

What is Bluefish, and what problem is it built to solve?

Bluefish is a text editor for programmers and web developers, built to help them write code, scripts, and websites, including dynamic and interactive websites. It supports multiple programming and markup languages and is designed to remain lightweight while providing coding tools.

What company sizes and industries is Bluefish the best fit for?

Bluefish is most represented among positive users at smaller organizations, with additional use across mid-market teams and several industries. The strongest clusters include small businesses and users in software and design-related fields.

Company size: Small businesses (50 or fewer employees) are the clearest cluster, with mid-market teams also represented.
Industry: Computer Software and Design are prominent, alongside Information Technology and Services, Marketing and Advertising, and other fields.

What customer support options does Bluefish provide, and how do users find the overall support experience?

The overall support experience comes across as middling rather than a clear strength, and customer support is described as difficult in some cases.

What features or capabilities could make Bluefish even more useful?

Bluefish could be more useful with stronger reliability, a more current interface, and smoother ways to move website files to a server.

Improve stability by reducing bugs and crashes during normal use.
Refresh the interface and provide a steadier cadence of updates.
Add built-in FTP uploading and better local-to-server file synchronization.

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Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/10/2026

"Reliable for Speed and Compatibility Checks, Less Needed in the Age of AI"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

I have tried before to test and compare its outputs with Google Antigravity in terms of web development, motion features, browsers compatibility, and security. It helped compare it with GA in terms of speed, reliability, level of confidence. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

With the rise of AI and its ability to interact with the user, I no longer need to use them, except for checking high complex assignments and so, I assign this task to a developer to work on. The biggest challenge is the non-integration of AI and that if so, it needs to compete with other tools out there. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Bluefish solving and how is that benefiting you?

As I said, the problem, Bluefish has tried to solve, has to do with development of applications. It provides another tools that allows my colleagues in other developers to test a number of new ideas, including language, translation, HTML code video and coding, complex small web applications within the website. The benefit has been to work on the code in ways that was not possible before. The layout it's a little bit outdated, but it has been effective over the years. Because the company has been around for a long time he has a very strong base of followers. He has been generally beneficial for us, but recently that has changed with the rise of AI tools. Some of my colleagues are interested in keeping it for now to ensure that we don't entirely rely on AI who is known to have hallucinations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Srijita J.

Public Relations Executive

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

8/1/2025

"It’s a very helpful app for side earnings"

4/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

Their product is easy to use and too many features Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

Difficult implantation and customer suport Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Salini K.

Software Development Manager

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

4/20/2022

"Bluefish: A Versatile & Solid Open Language Editor"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

The below things I like most in Bluefish are:

- It is very lightweight and consumes very less space on the hard disk.

- Non-technical people can easily use it without any prior technical knowledge.

- I can work with multiple languages easily. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

The below things I don't like most in Bluefish are:

- There are no frequent updates regularly.

- The software UI is outdated and it should be designed as per the latest material design guidelines so that people can enjoy working on that. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Bluefish:

I highly recommend starting programming with Bluefish because It is a very powerful & very easy to use all-in-one language editor tool that helps you to make better programming coding for your projects. As well as It is free to use so no extra fees monthly or yearly which is a great benefit for us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Bluefish solving and how is that benefiting you?

I am using Bluefish mostly for correction in my projects. I am also using it for making small projects which don't require too much coding. It helps me to solve my clients' project errors quickly and able to hand over projects on time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

11/24/2021

"A Pretty Great Software for Writing Code"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

The Bluefish software does have a lot of capabilities that other text editor software has. The software is available to everyone for free, too, which I thought was awesome. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

It can be very difficult to actually download and install. Also, I sometimes feel like the interface is really clunky and hard to navigate through. I would love an update. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Higher Education

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

1/13/2022

"Advanced text editor supporting wide range of coding languages"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

Clean and nice interface and it also supports wide range of coding languages python, Java, html, c, c++ Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

There's no FTP upload site button to update website files Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Jake S.

Marketing specialist

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

12/20/2020

"A great web improvement service !!!"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

In our company, the entire team of programmers and web developers use this powerful editor, since it offers us many options to write and design websites, execute scripts and programming code that benefits us in all the tasks assigned to us. Bluefish has an interface that supports many programming and markup languages, which allows us to adapt the platform to any need. It is truly one of the most efficient open source development software on the market, which has met all expectations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

When it comes to handling too many open text files in the various tabs that this software allows us to handle, it tends to hang a little or become slow, which is quite understandable, and this happens if you work with files that have more than 50 thousand lines. However, we pay close attention to this and handle the files that allow Bluefish to develop quickly, in order to use the functions it offers us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Bluefish:

It is the best solution for the creation of websites, it is extremely useful for experienced programmers and developers and also for those who do not have extensive knowledge on the subject, in both cases it encourages their capabilities and makes the most of them. The platform is highly professional, has features for GUI editing, in addition to having an interface suitable for handling multiple documents, and fully functional project support, as well as automatic configuration restoration, online spell check and more. features that allow all workers to optimize their performance Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Bluefish solving and how is that benefiting you?

We took full advantage of Bluefish's HTML editor, it is an excellent example of how good open source software can be for a growing company like ours. It is a platform that provides us with many functions and many tools with which we save time even for the team of experienced programmers, while still being friendly enough so that the beginners of the organization are just as productive in a short time. It is very useful in turn, because it has characteristics such as speed, the ability to open multiple files simultaneously, a powerful multiproject support, and support for remote files, highly customizable syntax markup, support for sub-patterns and assistant predefined patterns. for easy creation of documents, creation of tables and frames different sets of characters with which we are a much more agile team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Education Management

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

10/11/2021

"I really enjoyed using the software, it is an advanced text editor with many tools for programming."

5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

It is fast, easy to use, editing HTML documents specifically, and it supports coding languages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

Bluefish operators need to find an easy way to open a file via SSH from within Bluefish. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sheahan K.

Senior System Engineer

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

1/15/2021

"Easy to use Editor"

5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

Light weight, More support for Linux and open source applications and languages. Better documentations like wiki. webdev support. many language support it's. It is very light you can use on a PC without many requirements, Speed. faster opening and closing. less hardware requirement.

BlueFish is that it is a very stable and simple editor. This software has easy programming tools that allow you to edit text easily. It doesn't include about space in the hard hover of my machine. particularly fulfilled by utilizing it .I like it's spotless and decent interface. There aren't too many editing and design instruments, which makes it simple to follow and uncomplicated. the ability to edit HTML by hand versus, even those who have no knowledge of HTML, PHP, CSS, etc. I also came across the software ability to make and alter design projects. Good Product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

limited features on my PC than compared to MAC. and no so fancy looking. No an 'Upload to FTP site' button. Less Updates and fixes for bluefish. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Bluefish:

Easy to use not resource hungry, Open source. It is the best solution for the creation of websites. The platform is highly professional. In addition to having an interface suitable for handling multiple documents, and fully functional project support, as well as automatic configuration restoration, online spell check and more. if you need to do it quickly, keep in mind that bluefish is not an advanced text editor so you can not demand the same things as a full IDE Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Bluefish solving and how is that benefiting you?

Coding Errors, scripting Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Accounting

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5/31/2021

"Bluefish is awesome!"

5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

Bluefish is extremely easy to navigate!! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

There isn't anything I dislike about it! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ana Carolina P.

Computer Specialist

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

12/11/2019

"Best Free Web Editor"

5/5

What do you like best about Bluefish?

Simplicity is what I like most about this program; it does what you expect and that's it, there aren't a lot of unnecessary features. Other noteworthy aspects are the code snippet library and the ability to customize your own quick bar with the buttons from other bars that you use the most. It is very easy to use and very fast, unlike other web editors that are often slow. This web editor supports many languages such as: html/xhtml, css, js, php, c++, java, ruby, xml, and the best part is that we can access it for free without any payment or surcharge. BlueFish is a cross-platform application that works on most operating systems, including Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS-X, Windows, Solaris, and OpenBSD. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Bluefish?

No negative point about this great tool since it helped me with everything I needed to finish and perfect my websites and even improve those of my family and friends' clients. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Bluefish:

It is advisable to use this great tool called Bluefish because the service provider will take care of maintaining our server. You won't have to worry about downtimes, security updates, or anything other than creating and updating your page. Also, and most importantly, it is a free tool that offers us the same features as a private tool for which we have to pay to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Bluefish solving and how is that benefiting you?

Finish and perfect my website easily, quickly, and simply, saving a lot of time because this tool omits or lacks many functions that we most often do not use. This tool is very good and efficient. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.