nvim-lspconfig VS null-ls.nvim

Compare nvim-lspconfig vs null-ls.nvim and see what are their differences.

null-ls.nvim

Use Neovim as a language server to inject LSP diagnostics, code actions, and more via Lua. (by jose-elias-alvarez)
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nvim-lspconfig null-ls.nvim
530 165
12,317 3,554
2.0% -
9.8 0.0
about 20 hours ago almost 2 years ago
Lua Lua
Apache License 2.0 GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
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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.

nvim-lspconfig

Posts with mentions or reviews of nvim-lspconfig. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-04-01.
  • Postgres Language Server: Initial Release
    8 projects | dev.to | 1 Apr 2025
    Neovim (via nvim-lspconfig + mason)
  • How to setup VueJs in Neovim (January 2025)
    4 projects | dev.to | 2 Jan 2025
    Packages that we will use : blink.cmp for autocompletion, typescript-tools for the typescript LSP, neovim/nvim-lspconfig to set up the LSP, and Mason so we can install volar.
  • Setting Up Neovim
    5 projects | dev.to | 1 Jan 2025
    Check configs.md to ensure your language's LSP server is present there and edit the configs/lspconfig.lua file to add your language's LSP.
  • How to Setup Vim for Kotlin Development
    12 projects | dev.to | 27 Dec 2024
    Neovim Install the nvim-lspconfig plugin to make configuration of the LSP client simpler. Then update your init.lua to tell Neovim which filetypes to use the language server for (i.e. .kt and .kts extensions). The LSP client will try to the start the sever by running the kotlin_language_server binary. You can directly point Neovim to the location of the binary, or include this directory in your $PATH.
  • Lite 🚀 ApolloNvim Distro 2024
    47 projects | dev.to | 18 Oct 2024
    👉 With LSP in this installation, I use Coc for its simplicity without the need to intervene in the Coc configuration. LSP has been very useful in my Helix modal editor to configure Helixu.
  • Simple Neovim config
    6 projects | dev.to | 18 Sep 2024
  • Ultimate Neovim Setup Guide: lazy.nvim Plugin Manager
    25 projects | dev.to | 24 Jun 2024
    neovim/nvim-lspconfig: Quickstart configs for Nvim LSP
  • JetBrains' unremovable AI assistant meets irresistible outcry
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Feb 2024
    I suggest looking for blog posts about this, you're gunnuh wanna pick out a plugin manager and stuff. It's kind of like a package manager for neovim. You can install everything manually but usually you manually install a plugin manager and it gives you commands to manage the rest of your plugins.

    These two plugins are the bare minimum in my view.

    https://github.com/nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter

    Treesitter gives you much better syntax highlighting based on a parser for a given language.

    https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig

    This plugin helps you connect to a given language LSP quickly with sensible defaults. You more or less pick your language from here and copy paste a snippet, and then install the relevant LSP:

    https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/blob/master/doc/ser...

    For Python you'll want pylsp. For JavaScript it will depend on what frontend framework you're using, I probably can't help you there.

    pylsp itself takes some plugins and you'll probably want them. https://github.com/python-lsp/python-lsp-server

    Best of luck! Happy hacking.

  • Neovide – a simple, no-nonsense, cross-platform GUI for Neovim
    17 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Jan 2024
    Adding language support it neovim isn't very difficult once you're setup. I use nvim-lspconfig[1] and just about any language you could need is documented[2]. But like others have mentioned there are batteries included distributions of neovim if that's your cup of tea.

    [1]: https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/

    [2]: https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/blob/master/doc/ser...

  • A guide on Neovim's LSP client
    7 projects | dev.to | 13 Jan 2024
    If we can't find the basic usage in the documentation we can go to nvim-lspconfig's github repository. In there we look for a folder called server_configurations, this contains configuration files for a bunch of language servers.

null-ls.nvim

Posts with mentions or reviews of null-ls.nvim. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-11-18.
  • [SOLVED] Vue 3 + TypeScript + Inlay Hint support in NeoVim
    6 projects | dev.to | 18 Nov 2024
    I'd almost given up on finding "the right" solution. Everywhere I looked, others had "solved" the issue in different ways: they were using the vtsls TypeScript LSP wrapper instead of ts_ls, or they were using coc.nvim, or the now-archived null-ls.nvim. But nowhere could I simply find a reliable configuration for a Vue language server configured natively in NeoVim.
  • cpp setting problem
    4 projects | /r/neovim | 6 Dec 2023
  • Being a bash developer in the 21st century
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Sep 2023
    you can use nvim then, it has shellcheck for diagnostics and formatting, like in vscode :)

    here the link to the config: https://github.com/jose-elias-alvarez/null-ls.nvim/blob/main...

  • Linting/formatting and LSP
    1 project | /r/neovim | 8 Sep 2023
    I use a lot of different languages generally and I'm running into issues around formatting. Is there any standard way to use LSP formatting by default and otherwise fallback to specific linter/formatting programs? I believe null-ls is the normal way of dealing with this, but since it's been archived, I'd rather not rely on it.
  • How to setup efm-langserver for pint formatter?
    3 projects | /r/neovim | 13 Jul 2023
    I've been using pint for formatting php files with null-ls.nvim. Few days ago null-ls.nvim has announced that the plugin will be archived in few months so I started migrating all my formatters and linter from null-ls to efm-langserver. I got other things such as prettier, black, isort, mypy, etc. working but can't get pint to work with php files: If I run pint via efm-langserver, everything is deleted from the buffer, and the saved file is formatted separately. How do I setup efm-langserver correctly to work with pint? Below is my config.yml for pint currently. yaml tools: pint: &pint format-command: "pint --no-interaction --quiet ${INPUT}" format-stdin: false languages: php: - <<: *pint Thank you.
  • Archiving Null-Ls
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Jul 2023
  • null-ls will be archived
    1 project | /r/ThePrimeagenReact | 10 Jul 2023
    14 projects | /r/neovim | 9 Jul 2023
  • Why is nobody using CoC anymore?
    3 projects | /r/neovim | 3 Jul 2023
    Because null-ls.nvim & mason.nvim together do everything I wanted CoC for
  • Your favourite Neovim plugins?
    42 projects | /r/neovim | 21 Jun 2023

What are some alternatives?

When comparing nvim-lspconfig and null-ls.nvim you can also consider the following projects:

mason-lspconfig.nvim - Extension to mason.nvim that makes it easier to use lspconfig with mason.nvim.

lsp-format.nvim - A wrapper around Neovims native LSP formatting.

django-plus.vim - :guitar: Improvements to the handling of Django related files in Vim

lsp-zero.nvim - A starting point to setup some lsp related features in neovim.

mason.nvim - Portable package manager for Neovim that runs everywhere Neovim runs. Easily install and manage LSP servers, DAP servers, linters, and formatters.

nvim-lint - An asynchronous linter plugin for Neovim complementary to the built-in Language Server Protocol support.

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Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video.
Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
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