kickstart.nvim VS LunarVim

Compare kickstart.nvim vs LunarVim and see what are their differences.

kickstart.nvim

A launch point for your personal nvim configuration (by nvim-lua)
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kickstart.nvim LunarVim
298 274
21,543 18,592
3.5% 0.4%
8.5 6.7
23 days ago 7 months ago
Lua Lua
MIT License GNU General Public License v3.0 only
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

kickstart.nvim

Posts with mentions or reviews of kickstart.nvim. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-02-05.
  • Switching Fully to Neovim
    9 projects | dev.to | 5 Feb 2025
    My configuration was inspired by several great sources, including lazyvim starter, ThePrimeagen’s dotfiles, kickstart.nvim, and Typecraft’s Rails config. These provided a strong foundation that I’ve adapted to fit my workflow.
  • I Miss Vim
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Feb 2025
    https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim single file config in lua with the essentials. Some of the article still rings true though.
  • Tips to learn Programming by a Non-Ex FAANG (with only 2 months exp of course)
    1 project | dev.to | 1 Jan 2025
    Word of caution though, if you are a tinker like me you might want to stay away from vim (or VS Code plugins) or you might lose a month of learning time as you configure everything. I mean I did deep learn my editor and lua so I cannot complain too much. If you want to still use vim or neovim then use kickstart for vim and leave the configuring alone for now.
  • So You Want to Write Java in Neovim
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Dec 2024
    I believe that the Neovim Kickstart project gives you Telescope as the fuzzy finder. (The YouTube video by TJ is linked in the README.)

    https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim

  • [SOLVED] Vue 3 + TypeScript + Inlay Hint support in NeoVim
    6 projects | dev.to | 18 Nov 2024
    Since you asked so nicely, sure. Here are the volar and ts_ls server configs for nvim-lspconfig. If you're using something like kickstart.nvim, you'll want to add these entries to your servers table:
  • Neovim, but it’s in Windows
    2 projects | dev.to | 26 Jul 2024
    git clone https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim.git $env:LOCALAPPDATA\nvim\
  • An Experienced (Neo)Vimmer's Workflow
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Jun 2024
    For casual users like me, I find Kickstart (https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim) a good and sensible default that's not too opinionated.
  • My Flow and Productivity has Improved with the Simplicity of Neovim
    14 projects | dev.to | 21 Jun 2024
    With all of the above as the foundation for my move, where did I start? Honestly, not quite at the bottom but pretty close to it with TJ DeVries' KickStart project. I went down the path of wanting to understand exactly how my setup is working and only add in the plugins that I wanted. Looking back, I just didn't have the time to fully understand exactly what this meant. However, the act of failing with KickStart did give me some solid background in how Neovim, Lua, and Lazy (the plugin manager) work.
  • My Text Editor Journey: Towards Modal Editing
    5 projects | dev.to | 21 May 2024
    And I did give it some time when I tried it again after a while. I would say, using kickstart.nvim was one of the best choices I've ever taken. Hat's off to TJ for creating this wonderful piece of neovim config. It slowly eased me into the world of modal editing and, thereby, into neovim.
  • Now I get NeoVim
    1 project | dev.to | 16 May 2024
    I started by looking at The Primeagen Neovim tutorial that is only 4 videos long, used vim motions in VS Code for about a week, and then I made the jump to the real deal, I downloaded the kickstart.nvim files and starting using it. It was painful, I could not get some basic features for my personal projects working, highlight was broken as well as the go-to definitions, but as you should do as a developer, I looked up in google how to solve some issues, I found that I was missing some dependencies and I needed to install some stuff so treesitter could color my vue files, installed some LSPs, so I could write some basic Golang and I became to be productive.

LunarVim

Posts with mentions or reviews of LunarVim. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-08-18.
  • A Power-Filled IDE for Neovim with Sane Defaults
    1 project | dev.to | 9 Dec 2024
  • Leaving Neovim for Zed
    11 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Aug 2024
    > I also settled on Lunarvim (ans stopped worrying)

    Then I have some sad news for you. :(

    https://github.com/LunarVim/LunarVim/discussions/4518#discus...

  • Every Neovim, Every Config, All At Once
    3 projects | dev.to | 6 Mar 2024
    LunarVim
  • LunarVIM: An IDE Layer for Neovim
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Jan 2024
  • Tools to achieve a 10x developer workflow on Windows
    11 projects | dev.to | 8 Nov 2023
    I would suggest to start getting into vim by first trying out popular vim keybinding plugins available on your favorite code editor and get used to those first. Then, if you want to dive deeper into the power of Neovim, try out popular configs like LazyVim, LunarVim, NvChad... Taking Neovim from a mere text editor to a full-featured IDE with features like intellisense, debugging, testing, etc... on your own takes quite a lot of work and configuration.
  • Helix 23.10 Highlights
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Oct 2023
    I used Helix for a while due to its support for LSP out-of-the-box, which my Vim config at the time couldn't live up to. I switched back to NeoVim after finding LunarVim[1] which had everything I was trying to get setup in my own config.

    [1] https://www.lunarvim.org/

  • How to Transform Vim to a Complete IDE?
    7 projects | dev.to | 19 Sep 2023
  • Mastering Emacs
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Aug 2023
    I'll admit I didn't look into it, but Helix sounds like something like LunarVim (https://www.lunarvim.org/)

    Personally I much prefer that the editor NOT ship with something like that by default, especially when it's so easy to set up. I have several different vim config I use, including a pretty bare-bones one for headless systems, and I much prefer the ability to customize something very specifically.

    Build tools that can compose together, rather than a single do-it-all tool. That is the power of the low level editors vs IDE's.

  • No inline errors in Python unless I add and delete a line
    2 projects | /r/neovim | 18 Aug 2023
  • LazyVim
    32 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Jul 2023
    I can't comment on any implementation details, but at least with LunarVim (which I use for daily coding), a slowdown when interacting with LSP is very noticeable. Some others have attested to this on a GitHub issue.

    I'm not doubting your experiences with the lack of a slowdown, but there is truth that others do experience it. That might be more of a problem with LunarVim itself rather than Vim, but how likely am I (as someone who would like to avoid what he calls "config hell") or other newcomers to avoid whatever pitfalls there are, if a distribution designed for ease of use by people who know better fall into them?

    https://github.com/LunarVim/LunarVim/discussions/3359

What are some alternatives?

When comparing kickstart.nvim and LunarVim you can also consider the following projects:

NvChad - Blazing fast Neovim framework providing solid defaults and a beautiful UI, enhancing your neovim experience.

LazyVim - Neovim config for the lazy

AstroNvim - AstroNvim is an aesthetic and feature-rich neovim config that is extensible and easy to use with a great set of plugins

lazy.nvim - 💤 A modern plugin manager for Neovim

KotlinLanguageServer - Kotlin code completion, diagnostics and more for any editor/IDE using the Language Server Protocol

SpaceVim - A community-driven modular vim/neovim distribution - The ultimate vimrc

Neovim-from-scratch - 📚 A Neovim config designed from scratch to be understandable

NvChad - An attempt to make neovim cli as functional as an IDE while being very beautiful , blazing fast. [Moved to: https://github.com/NvChad/NvChad]

AstroVim - AstroNvim is an aesthetic and feature-rich neovim config that is extensible and easy to use with a great set of plugins [Moved to: https://github.com/AstroNvim/AstroNvim]

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Revolutionize your code reviews with AI. CodeRabbit offers PR summaries, code walkthroughs, 1-click suggestions, and AST-based analysis. Boost productivity and code quality across all major languages with each PR.
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