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Sublime Text

Native code editor with a one-off personal licence

Price: $99 once

This versionThe next major is a new purchase

Buy direct Website

Price read on sublimehq.com, the page Buy direct opens.

The catch

Updates stop after three years; your version keeps working but newer builds need a paid upgrade

The full picture

Updates are included for 3 years from purchase. After that you keep and can keep using every version the licence covered, but new builds require a paid upgrade. If you use it at a company the personal key does not apply: business licences are sold only as an annual per-seat subscription. Unlicensed use is an unlimited evaluation rather than a timed trial, but it interrupts you with a purchase reminder.

Pays back in
5 months
Seats
No Mac count statedOne personal key, every computer you use, across macOS, Windows and Linux
Developer account
None needed
Buy once$99Rent 5 years$1,200

$1,101 kept over five years, and you still have the app.
Against Cursor Pro at $240 a year, Cursor's Individual plan at $20/month; the page shows no cheaper annual figure. Also replaces JetBrains subscriptions and GitHub Copilot.

What it looks like

Sublime Text: A full Sublime Text 4 window split diagonally to show the light and dark themes at once: sidebar file tree of the TypeScript compiler source, two open tabs (scanner.ts, types.ts), a three-column split editor, the auto-complete popup with '22 Definitions', minimap, and the status bar (Line 896, Column 37 / master / Spaces: 4 / TypeScript). 2560x1386 PNG — the largest and cleanest interface shot available. Caveat: it is the Windows/Linux build (menu bar inside the window, minimise/maximise/close at top right).
A full Sublime Text 4 window split diagonally to show the light and dark themes at once. Vendor site — image used in the official 'Sublime Text 4' announcement post at sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-4
Sublime Text: A genuine macOS Sublime Text window (traffic lights, 'Sublime Text' title bar) with the svelte repo in the sidebar, README.md and CONTRIBUTING.md tabs, a two-pane split with minimaps. Caveat: the top third is the marketing header (logo, 'The sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose'). 2400x1256 JPEG.
A genuine macOS Sublime Text window (traffic lights, 'Sublime Text' title bar) with the svelte repo in the sidebar, README.md and CONTRIBUTING.md tabs, a two-pane split with minimaps. Vendor site — the homepage og:image

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

Sublime Text is the editor you buy when startup time and responsiveness are the features you care about. It opens a 400 MB log file and scrolls it without thinking; most of its competitors do not. Multiple cursors, Goto Anything, and a project-wide search that returns before you have finished reading the query are the reasons people stay with it for a decade.

It is not an IDE. There is a built-in LSP client and Package Control has an extension for most things, so modern language tooling works — but you assemble that setup rather than receive it. If you want refactoring tools and a debugger present on day one, buy something else.

The licence is $99 once, personal, one key across every computer and operating system you use, with three years of updates. After three years the app you have keeps working indefinitely and newer builds need a paid upgrade. That is the honest shape of it: not updates-forever, but three years is generous by any current standard and you never lose what you paid for.

The trap worth naming: if you use it at work, the personal licence does not cover you, and business licensing is an annual per-seat subscription with no buy-once option. Plenty of people quietly run the free evaluation forever instead. It nags, it does not expire, and if you only open an editor to fix a config file now and then, that is a reasonable place to stop.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • Owners repeatedly bring up startup time and large-file handling as the reason it stays installed next to whatever else they use
  • Commenters regularly contrast its memory use with Electron editors, describing the same work at roughly half of VS Code's footprint
  • Multiple cursors and project-wide search come up again and again as the things people say they miss when they switch away
  • Several long-time buyers say they pay willingly because the app keeps working and the money goes to a small team, not because they expect new features

Criticised

  • Setting up modern language tooling is described as do-it-yourself work; commenters report fighting LSP configuration and finding plugins for newer ecosystems unmaintained
  • Several people say visible development has been slow enough that they drifted to VS Code or Zed and did not come back
  • Would-be plugin authors repeatedly complain that Package Control is third-party and that the API documentation is disjointed

Details

The price in full

$99 USD personal licence, a once-off purchase that includes 3 years of updates; after 3 years an upgrade is required for newer builds. One key covers all your computers and operating systems. Business licensing is separate and subscription-only, at $65/seat/year for the first 10 seats scaling down to $50. A Sublime Text + Sublime Merge bundle is sold at a discount.

The Sublime Text page at sublimetext.com
The developer’s own page. sublimetext.com, captured 22 Sep 2026
Free trial
Yes
Works offline
Yes
Apple Silicon
Native
On Setapp
No
Minimum macOS
not stated
Developer
Sublime HQ

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