--- 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 Pros and Cons: Top Advantages and Disadvantages #### Quick AI Summary Based on G2 Reviews Generated from real user reviews Users love the **extensive customizability** of GNU Emacs, allowing for a tailored and flexible user experience. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2485648&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users love the **customization** options in GNU Emacs, enabling tailored experiences and extensible functionality. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2485706&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users experience a **steep learning curve** with GNU Emacs, requiring significant time to understand its complexities. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2485655&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users find a **steep learning curve** for GNU Emacs, often taking considerable time to understand its functionalities. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2485668&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) ### Top Pros or Advantages of GNU Emacs ##### 1. Customizability Users love the **extensive customizability** of GNU Emacs, allowing for a tailored and flexible user experience. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2485648&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Ganesh G.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Ganesh G.") GG Ganesh G. Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 5.0/5 "Highly Configurable and Extensible Platform" What do you like about GNU Emacs? Everything is configurable and extensible ##### 2. Customization Users love the **customization** options in GNU Emacs, enabling tailored experiences and extensible functionality. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2485706&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Ganesh G.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Ganesh G.") GG Ganesh G. Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 5.0/5 "Highly Configurable and Extensible Platform" What do you like about GNU Emacs? Everything is configurable and extensible ### Top Cons or Disadvantages of GNU Emacs ##### 1. Complexity Users experience a **steep learning curve** with GNU Emacs, requiring significant time to understand its complexities. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2485655&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Ganesh G.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Ganesh G.") GG Ganesh G. Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 5.0/5 "Highly Configurable and Extensible Platform" What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? Learning curve is very low and its take lot of time to figure out things. ##### 2. Learning Difficulty Users find a **steep learning curve** for GNU Emacs, often taking considerable time to understand its functionalities. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2485668&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Ganesh G.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Ganesh G.") GG Ganesh G. Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 5.0/5 "Highly Configurable and Extensible Platform" What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? Learning curve is very low and its take lot of time to figure out things. ## Top-Rated Alternatives [ ![Visual Studio Code](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/image/large_detail/large_detail_13aba37ae908d9cf29a2452925257ccc/visual-studio-code.jpeg "Visual Studio Code") Visual Studio Code 4.7/5(2,732) ](https://www.g2.com/products/visual-studio-code/reviews) [ ![Notepad++](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/hd_favicon/1487566090/notepad.png "Notepad++") Notepad++ 4.6/5(2,475) ](https://www.g2.com/products/notepad/reviews) [ ![Sublime Text](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/hd_favicon/1487566128/sublime-text.png "Sublime Text") Sublime Text 4.5/5(1,783) ](https://www.g2.com/products/sublime-text/reviews) [ View All Alternatives ](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/competitors/alternatives) ![Nathan L.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Nathan L.") NL Nathan L. Full Stack Javascript Developer E-Learning Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 12/22/2015 "No nonsense get things done editor." 5/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? The wide variety of community packages and the minimal impact on system resources while it is running. Everything is customizable to an individual developer, but the major modes remain the same so that pair programming is easily accomplished. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? There isn't a lot to dislike. The software is actively maintained and any issues are easily addressed through community support. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: Definitely give Spacemacs a try. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? Creating realtime user experiences using various technologies. All required packages are easily accessible, and easy file navigation with close git integration allows for rapid iteration while keeping working documents easily accessible to reduce mental overhead. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Financial Services](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Financial Services") UF Verified User in Financial Services Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 12/22/2015 "A programmable editor for any programming language" 5/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? The simplest editor that supports customization in the most complex ways. Everything in Emacs can be changed; from the syntax coloring of your favorite language, to how frequently the cursor blinks. Some people say Vim has better default key bindings. Not only can those be changed, but there are actually several implementations of Vim within Emacs itself! Also, Emacs supports macros like no other editor (except maybe Vim). Automating routine tasks are a breeze in Emacs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? Emacs has a steep learning curve. It takes a while for new users to get accustomed to it. It may take a while to learn, but when you do perfect your Emacs strokes, there's literally no equivalent. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: Take it out for a spin! It's a great tool to learn. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? It's great for editing text, writing and automating tasks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: Organic YH Yahao H. Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 12/22/2015 "Acquiring new LaTeX&Coding experience by using emacs" 4/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? I could add new feature to this text editor by magic of elisp. let it work as you like is not an easy thing as it involve lots of things about lisp. Once you drag in and will find it's a way to make you progress. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? Maybe the shortcoming of this software is that it allow users to do too many things, so the freshman will regard it as a hard thing to config it, and start. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: Emacs is an really old software, but still work effectively. In community, many users contribute their configure file or lots of experience. We could easily find a solution in stackoverflow or other site. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? A emacs which has been well configured can help a lot in business such as coding. I often use it when write Python code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Marketing and Advertising](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Marketing and Advertising") UM Verified User in Marketing and Advertising Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 1/19/2016 "Development Environment For All My Needs" 4/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? My favorite part about Emacs is the ability to write Emacs Lisp to customize the editor however I want. The ability to do so is by-far the best part about it, albeit a bit frustrating at times, it can do wonderful things. Doing things in Emacs is so much faster than having to use a Terminal window and a point-click editor side-by-side. Running and creating commands can be really amazing for the most complex of things. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? To be honest, there isn't much that I dislike about Emacs, basically everything I've ever wanted in an editor is there or if not I can make it. The only thing that gets me is the learning-curve required to use emacs fluently. Since I come from a background of using mainly editors such as Sublime Text, Atom, or event notepad++; I've always used a point-and-click UI. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: Get involved with the community and go ask some questions. There are a number of IRC or Slack groups that are specifically for Emacs. The community is friendly and the number of Elisp repositories you will find or code snippets is quite a few. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? I've been learning Emacs over the past year or so and still haven't completely gotten fluent in it, though it will save a lot of time when my setup is how I want it, which might take a while. I've learned a lot about the innards of different systems such as Elixir and Erlang when writing custom elisp commands. Mainly, productivity is my main problem I'm trying to solve with Emacs. I've already seen some improvement in my productivity when I do use emacs, though, when I need to tweak something within the editor, it does take some time. It's most definitely worth it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite MK Michael K. Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 12/21/2015 "The best editor for developers" 4/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? Emacs is infinitely customizable and extensible. It's built on Lisp scripts, so if a feature you need is missing, you can write your own script or find one online. By utilizing free and open source packages, I've created an IDE solution that rivals WebStorm and other proprietary IDEs. Are you a Vim user? Emacs supports full Vim emulation. It's really easy to switch over. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? There is a large learning curve. An editor like Atom or Sublime Text is much easier to pick up and use with no experience. However, it is worth learning. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: Give it a try, you'll be really surprised at the amount of features it offers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? Everything I do in a text editor has become quicker since I switched to Emacs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Nicole A.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Nicole A.") NA Nicole A. Assistant Professor Higher Education Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 7/12/2015 "Excellent Tool, Steep Learning Curve" 5/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? When I was first introduced to emacs, I was told that it was "an excellent operating system, only lacking a good text editor". This facetious comment stresses the power that emacs has. Within emacs, I can view PDFs, compile LaTeX, open a shell and run python... and edit text. Emacs is suited to a variety of programming-like tasks; it responds differently whether I am in a \*.cc file or a \*.tex file. All of these aspects are controllable, in addition to the types of extensions that it associates with different keywords. It is possible to edit and add to this, which I have never done. I've used a few special extensions to Emacs, such as 'org-mode'. While nice, I found it wasn't the best tool for me. There is a way to have Emacs pull from file templates when you create a new file - this is very helpful for programming tasks, where you can have the basic structure (including constructor, destructor, etc names) populated automatically. Similarly, I have a special command that automatically opens the header file associated with the text my cursor is on (or it defaults to the header file for the class I am in) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? I love the default key bindings, which are not the Windows ones. I dislike that when I am in other programs Ctrl-k does nothing for me. I am sure that it is possible to change all of the keybindings, but after using Emacs for over 10 years, I want to keep these! Due to how it looks and responds, the learning curve is very steep. I recommend this (and Linux) to my students, but I'm not surprised that they all don't jump on board. Many of them prefer to use a graphical environment for interacting with python and LaTeX. I hate graphical interfaces. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: Spend the time setting up a good .emacs file - and take it with you! I work on emacs on 5+ computers, and I hate it when something isn't set up the same way. I can't do much on my own in LISP, but there are many examples out there to get you started on configuration. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? Programming: not just syntax awareness, but the use of templates and shortcuts for navigating files. LaTeX: Emacs doesn't spellcheck all of the special LaTeX commands and (based on a selected region) can do automatic indenting. I use this all of the time to find environments that I didn't close. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Eduardo R.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Eduardo R.") ER Eduardo R. CEO Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 1/6/2016 "Best editor in the world for development" 5/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? It's extensible, open-source and integrates with real time development workflows such as CIDER. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? It has a steep learning curve and lots of moving parts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: Get used to key in commands. A nice tutorial is: http://www.jesshamrick.com/2012/09/10/absolute-beginners-guide-to-emacs/ If using a laptop keyboard, switch your control-cap locks keys: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MovingTheCtrlKey Get a nice integration to your development language. I use CIDER for Clojure. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? Developing fintech applications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Financial Services](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Financial Services") IF Verified User in Financial Services Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 3/18/2016 "Daily code development, blogging, web design." 5/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? Extensible. It uses elisp to extend functionality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? Vim. It is literally just a text editor and that is it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: User a starter kit like Prelude. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? I can read my email, monitor my slack messages, commit my code, do code reviews. Using org mode I set to-do lists with measurable outcomes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Isaac Z.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Isaac Z.") IZ Isaac Z. Product Specialist Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 12/22/2015 "A vim user that using emacs. Ok, I am using spacemacs." 2.5/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? Spacemacs extension Helm for search anything. Org-mode Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? single-threaded helm do not support helm embed. company mode do not support fuzzy match. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs: multiple-thread supporting Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? I use emacs write software. And so, any business problem I solved with emacs. Emacs need multiple thread support Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Emile S.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Emile S.") ES Emile S. Developer Computer Software Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 12/23/2015 "The powertool of powertools" 4/5 What do you like best about GNU Emacs? I enjoy writing lisp code in general and having my config in elisp is great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about GNU Emacs? At times things don't compose that well with a very customised setup. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you? Writing software in an interactive manner. Emacs is great for this. 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