Sublime Text vs Notepad++
Notepad++ is free and Windows-only; Sublime Text is paid but runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Pick Sublime Text if…
You work on more than one operating system, or want one personal licence key that covers all your computers. You are happy to pay for a polished editor.
Pick Notepad++ if…
You are on Windows and want a free, open-source editor to replace Notepad for code and text.
Price
- Paid
- Free
- Open source
Starting price
Free plan
Open source
Works on
| Feature | Paid code, markup and prose editor for Windows, macOS and Linux with a free evaluation. | Free source code editor for Windows, built on Scintilla, that can replace Windows Notepad. |
|---|---|---|
| Price |
|
|
| Starting price | $99 USD (personal licence, one-time, includes 3 years of updates) | — |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Works on | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows |
| Try Sublime Text (opens the Sublime Text website in a new tab) | Try Notepad++ (opens the Notepad++ website in a new tab) |
The biggest difference is price. Sublime Text costs $99 USD for a one-time personal licence that includes 3 years of updates; business licences are annual subscriptions at $65 per seat per year for the first 10 seats. You can evaluate it for free, but a licence must be bought for continued use. Notepad++ is free, with no paid plan.
Platforms are the second difference. Sublime Text is native on Windows, macOS (including Apple Silicon) and Linux (including ARM64), and one personal key covers all your computers and operating systems. Notepad++ runs on Windows only; its repository says all Windows systems still supported by Microsoft are supported.
On openness, Notepad++ is open source: its repository LICENSE file states GPL version 3 with clarifications and exceptions. Sublime Text is proprietary. Sublime Text lists a GPU-accelerated interface, multiple selections, split views and a Python 3.8 plugin API. Notepad++ describes itself as a source code editor built on Scintilla and written in C++ with the Win32 API.
If you only use Windows and do not want to pay, Notepad++ covers the basics at no cost. If you switch between Windows, macOS and Linux, Sublime Text is the one of the two that runs on all three.
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Last updated 17 October 2026. How we make money