code-server Hosting: Your Editor in the Browser

code-server is an open-source project by Coder that runs the VS Code editor on a server and serves it to your browser. You edit files, run commands and commit code on the VPS from a laptop, a tablet or a borrowed computer, with nothing to install locally. Choose it with a plan, pay, and we build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) and install it in a few minutes. You get:

• code-server 4.143.1, based on VS Code 1.143.1, MIT-licensed.
• An HTTPS address like yourname-x7k2.devoster.app with a Let's Encrypt certificate.
• A password on it from the first second. code-server has no user accounts, only a password. Ours is set before the editor first starts, so it is never served without a login, and it is shown and reset in the Devoster dashboard.
• A terminal and Git inside the editor, with your projects in /home/coder/workspace. Your whole home folder, including extensions, editor settings and dotfiles, is kept across updates.
• Dashboard controls to open the app, reset the password, restart, stop or start it, read its logs, run an update and connect your own domain.

The app is free; you pay only the VPS plan, with 10% off yearly. The server comes with full root, free nightly backups kept 3 days plus one snapshot, a dedicated IPv4, 1 Gbps with unlimited bandwidth and DDoS protection. Already have a Devoster VPS? Install code-server on it from VPS Control, after a quick check of the OS, ports 80 and 443 and free disk, or reinstall the server with it; both are free. Other apps that install this way are on the One-Click Apps page.

This is the difference people notice first. code-server installs extensions from Open VSX, an open registry run by the Eclipse Foundation. It can't use the Visual Studio Marketplace, whose terms limit it to Microsoft's own products.

Many popular extensions are published on Open VSX too: themes, linters, formatters, language support for most languages, Git tools. Some Microsoft extensions are not, and won't work here:

• Pylance (Microsoft's Python language server)
• C/C++ from Microsoft
• Remote-SSH, Dev Containers and the other Remote-* extensions
• Live Share

For some of these, open-source alternatives exist on Open VSX. Before you move a project over, search open-vsx.org for the extensions you depend on. If one is a must-have and isn't there, desktop VS Code connecting to a plain VPS over SSH is the better setup for you.

code-server runs in a container on your VPS. The terminal inside the editor is a shell in that container, as the non-root user coder, with sudo inside the container. Three things follow from that:

• Only your home folder persists. Packages you add with sudo apt install are lost when the container is recreated on an update. Put toolchains in your home folder instead: version managers such as nvm, pyenv or rustup install there and survive updates.
• No Docker from the editor. The editor has no access to the Docker socket, by design: that access would amount to root on the whole server for anyone with the editor's password. To run containers, SSH into the VPS as root.
• Root is still yours. The server stays an unmanaged VPS with full root over SSH. code-server is one service on it, behind its own HTTPS address.

Git works as usual from the terminal or the editor's Source Control view. Use an SSH key or a personal access token for your Git host, stored in your home folder.

The editor itself is light, but real sessions use 300–600 MB of RAM once a project is open with a language server or two. Whatever you run in the terminal comes on top: a dev server, a test suite, a compiler.

You can upgrade from the panel later without reinstalling. Disk grows with the plan too (50 GB on Micro, 75 GB on Starter, 100 GB on Basic), which matters once you keep dependencies and build caches for several projects.

code-server is a single-user editor. There are no accounts or roles, and anyone with the password gets your code and a terminal on your server. Treat it like an SSH key:

• Keep the generated password or reset it from the dashboard to another long one. It is managed by the panel, so it can't be changed from inside the editor.
• Don't share it as a team login. For several developers, give each one their own VPS, or use a Git host such as Forgejo to share code between them.
• Keep secrets out of the workspace when you can, and use tokens with only the scopes you need.

Outbound mail ports are blocked by default, which doesn't affect code-server: it sends no email. Calls to package registries, Git hosts and APIs over HTTPS work normally.

We test new code-server versions and apply them in a maintenance hour you choose, or when you press Update now. A snapshot of the VPS is taken first, and if the editor doesn't come back healthy the server is rolled back automatically. Your home folder, with the workspace, extensions and settings, carries over; packages installed with apt inside the container don't. Auto-update can be switched off.

code-server is MIT-licensed. "VS Code" and "Visual Studio Code" are Microsoft trademarks; code-server is Coder's project, and Devoster is affiliated with neither company.

The server is unmanaged: you have full root, and its security, your code and your credentials are your responsibility. Nightly backups (3 days) cover the whole VPS, but keep your code in a Git remote as well. When is this the wrong choice? If you rely on Pylance, Live Share or other Marketplace-only extensions, or you want several developers on one shared editor.