Visual Studio Community for Mac is free and open-source, with no subscription or licensing fees. It is suitable for:
Best-in-class support for .NET MAUI and Unity. 2. JetBrains Rider (Paid / Free for Non-Commercial) VS for Mac is Retiring - What About Visual Studio / MAUI? visual studio community mac
The user interface of Visual Studio Community for Mac is similar to the Windows version, but with a macOS twist. The IDE features a menu bar at the top, with a toolbar and navigation bar below. The main window is divided into several sections, including: Visual Studio Community for Mac is free and
| Feature | VS Community for Mac | VS Community for Windows | |---------|----------------------|---------------------------| | | Cocoa (native macOS) | WPF (Windows native) | | WinForms/WPF support | ❌ No | ✅ Yes | | C++ support | ❌ No (only C#/F#) | ✅ Yes (MSVC, CMake, etc.) | | SQL Server tools | Limited (only Azure Data Studio integration) | Full SSDT, local DB, schema compare | | Extensions | Limited (smaller marketplace) | Vast ecosystem | | Performance | Acceptable (slower than Windows version) | Optimized for Windows | | Docker support | ✅ Yes (basic) | ✅ Advanced (Kubernetes, WSL2) | | Live Unit Testing | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (Enterprise) | JetBrains Rider (Paid / Free for Non-Commercial) VS
To run Visual Studio Community for Mac, you'll need:
| Alternative | Best for | Cost | macOS native | |-------------|----------|------|--------------| | | Web, .NET Core, Unity (basic), cross-platform | Free | ✅ Yes | | JetBrains Rider | Full .NET, Xamarin, Unity, ASP.NET, WinForms (via Wine?), MAUI | Paid (free trial) | ✅ Yes | | Visual Studio (Windows) via VM/Parallels | Windows-specific (WinForms, WPF, C++ MSVC) | Free (Community) | ❌ (needs VM) | | NeoVim + Omnisharp | Lightweight C# editing | Free | ✅ Yes |