--- title: GNU Emacs Reviews meta_title: 'GNU Emacs Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 84 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how GNU Emacs works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 84 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-09' parent_category: name: Editor url: https://www.g2.com/categories/editor --- # GNU Emacs Reviews **Vendor:** FreeCAD **Category:** [Text Editor Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/text-editor) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 84 ## About GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a customizable text editor that is an interpreter and dialect with extension to support text editing with content-sensitive editing modes, built-in documentation, Unicode support, and more. ## GNU Emacs Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users love the **extensive customizability** of GNU Emacs, allowing for a tailored and flexible user experience. (1 reviews) - Users love the **customization** options in GNU Emacs, enabling tailored experiences and extensible functionality. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users experience a **steep learning curve** with GNU Emacs, requiring significant time to understand its complexities. (1 reviews) - Users find a **steep learning curve** for GNU Emacs, often taking considerable time to understand its functionalities. (1 reviews) ## GNU Emacs Reviews ### 1. GNU Emacs, includes kitchen sink **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Damon B. | Senior Forensic Analyst, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 18, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs has been around forever, so has a large base of support and experience to go with it. The set of extensions is pretty extensive, though not always comprehensive. You can customize Emacs to do pretty much anything you like. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It is overly complex, a bit on the large side, and one need to learn the LISP language to write extensions for Emacs. As a text editor, its keyboard shortcuts are fairly arcane. It uses a GUI only as an afterthought if at all, when available. It is not installed by default on many common systems (Mac OS, Linux) due to its large size and steep learning curve. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Try Vim, SublimeText, Atom, and the other more modern editors out there too. If you'd still choose Emacs over them, it might be for you. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used many text editing tools over the years, and looked for those that had at least basic understanding of different programming languages and the conventions that go along with them around tools, syntax, etc. A good text editor makes it easier to translate your thoughts into code and helps you find and organize your work. Emacs does an admirable job at these tasks, once you overcome the learning curve. However, it stands in isolation from other editing tools so if you are in an environment where you can't run Emacs, your skills don't translate well to other common editing tools. ### 2. Stockholm Syndrome **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sunil W. | Consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** After learning the keybindings, using emacs becomes easy. Second nature. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** In order to do anything beyond light customisation, the user needs to learn lisp. Lisp is difficult to learn. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Consider other platforms as well. Consider all options very carefully. Vim is probably a better alternative: it is installed on more platforms and has a larger community. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use emacs for day-to-day work with web developement. With emacs, programming can be fast ## GNU Emacs Discussions - [What is GNU Emacs used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-gnu-emacs-used-for) - [Is Emacs better than Vim?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-emacs-better-than-vim) - [Is Emacs worth learning?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-emacs-worth-learning) - [What's so great about Emacs?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-s-so-great-about-emacs) - [View GNU Emacs pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-12+11%3A54%3A17+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=8227666e-fc75-4ff9-a444-3e36da01407d&secure%5Btoken%5D=410466c9d4411dc3798db1eaf2046fcce787405b45d2aed65f93db304b8edb3a&format=llm_user) ## GNU Emacs Features **Coding** - Syntax highlighting - Autocompletion - Find and replace - Code folding **Editing** - Collaborative editing - Language Support - Selection Methods **Functionality** - Extensibility - Cross-platform support - Plugins and integrations - Security **Agentic AI - Landing Page Builders** - Cross-system Integration ## Top GNU Emacs Alternatives - [Visual Studio Code](https://www.g2.com/products/visual-studio-code/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (2,658 reviews) - [Notepad++](https://www.g2.com/products/notepad/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (2,413 reviews) - [Sublime Text](https://www.g2.com/products/sublime-text/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (1,749 reviews)