CodeRunner
run snippets in about 25 languages without making a project
Perpetual
The developer's licence policy says free future upgrades are included with all licences, so there is no known paid-upgrade cliff — but that is a policy statement from a one-person shop, not a contractual term. Work machines belonging to an employer fall under the Site License, not the $22.99 personal one. No trial terms are published anywhere on the site: the download link hands over the app directly, so assume unlicensed use is feature-limited rather than a defined trial period.
Cost over five years
$23 once = 1 month of Replit Core. Over five years that is $1,080 rented against $22.99 owned — $1,057 kept, and you still have the app.
Replit Core priced at $216 a year — Core plan at $18 per month on annual billing. Checked 2026-09-22.
Most days you do not want a project, a workspace or a language server. You want to see whether that regex behaves, whether the sort is stable, whether the interview question compiles. CodeRunner is the app for that gap: one document, a language picker in the corner, a console below, and a debugger with breakpoints when the print statements stop being enough.
It is not a toolchain manager. It runs Python with your Python, Go with your Go, Swift with the Swift in your Xcode install. That is the reason it opens instantly and the reason it will fail loudly if the language you picked is not on the machine.
The $22.99 buys a personal licence and, per the developer's own licence page, every future version. That is a stronger promise than most of the editors on this site make, and it is worth knowing the boundary: the licence covers computers you personally own. A laptop your employer bought falls under the site licence at $15 per machine, with a five-machine minimum, which makes CodeRunner an awkward buy for a single person at a company.
Skip it if you already live in a full IDE, or if your scratch work is all one language — a terminal
and a main.py costs nothing and does the same job.
What it looks like
What it does
- Runs and debugs code in roughly 25 languages
- Breakpoints, variable inspection and a built-in console
- Completion and inline documentation for supported languages
- Uses the toolchains already installed on your Mac
- Small native app that opens in about a second
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Also bought outright in dev tools
The facts
- Price
- $22.99
- Licence
- Buy once, own forever
- What you get
- One payment. Updates included, indefinitely.
- Details
- $22.99 Personal License from the developer, for individual use on computers the licence holder owns personally; the licence policy states that free future upgrades are included with all licences. A Site License for company or institution machines is $15 per computer with a 5-computer minimum. The same $22.99 price applies on the Mac App Store with no in-app purchases, and Mac App Store buyers can request a key for the direct-download build. Also included in a Setapp subscription.
- Free trial
- No
- On Setapp
- Yes
- Minimum macOS
- not stated
- Developer
- Nikolai Krill
- Price checked
- 2026-09-22 (medium confidence)
Check it yourself - Price band
- $15 to $30