Online IDEs for Teaching CS in 2026

Charlie Meyer

Charlie Meyer

— 3 min read
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At Pickcode we've seen the market for online IDEs for education change a lot in the past few years. Online IDEs are an important tool for teachers to run their CS classroom, especially for students using Chromebooks. In this post we'll look at the current state of things and the factors you should consider when looking for an online IDE. Pickcode is a great option, but every platform has pros and cons depending on what you need.

A variety of tools that were previously popular are no longer available as of the writing of this post in November 2026.

Replit was a popular option for schools until Replit discontinued its Teams for Education offering in fall 2024. Replit now focuses on AI coding for professionals and startups. On Replit's platform you can edit code, but it is primarily intended for AI software development, not teaching CS.

Coding Rooms was another popular option particularly because of its support for remote learning during the pandemic. Coding Rooms was acquired by Wiley in December 2022 and is no longer available as a standalone product.

Github Classroom was an education-focused platform for writing code where teachers could create assignments using Github's code hosting. Github Classroom was used in both K-12 and higher ed. Github Classroom shut down in August 2026. Teachers can still use the non-classroom version of Github for writing code. Github recommended users of Github Classroom move to Codio.

Trinket was another popular platform that was focused specifically on an education audience. Trinket shut down in August 2026 and open sourced the code for its platform. Trinket's homepage recommends that teachers transition to Pickcode, Dodona, Kita, or StriveMath's hosted version of Trinket's open source code. Pickcode isn't affiliated with Trinket, but we worked with their team to make sure we could support anyone who needed a new place to go after the shutdown.

Actively available options

There are many actively available and popular solutions as of November 2026.

Pickcode and Codio are standalone online IDEs. Pickcode supports Python, Java, HTML/CSS/JS, and C++ and is focused specifically on K-12. Pickcode does not include any features for AI code completion for students. Codio supports far more languages and frameworks, including Jupyter notebooks, NodeJS, React, Docker. Codio is widely used in higher education and also supports K-12. CuraCourse is a new tool that launched in 2026 and includes a built in IDE as a part of its STEM course creation platform.

CodeHS, CodeAI (formerly code.org), and JuiceMind are curriculum providers that also have online IDEs built-in to their platforms. In addition to their IDEs and curriculum materials, these providers support creating quizzes and autograding. CodeHS and JuiceMind also have Cyber Range tools for the new AP Cybersecurity course.

There are many other sites such as W3Schools TryIt, JDoodle, Codesandbox which aren't focused on education in particular. Codecademy, Codédex, and freeCodeCamp focus on self-paced learning and include code editors as a part of their programming lessons.

Choosing what's best for you

Each of the platforms above have different benefits and different pricing. Here's a summary:

  • Codesandbox, Codio, CodeHS, CuraCourse, JuiceMind, JDoodle, and Pickcode have the widest language support and have the most fully featured IDE features.
  • CodeHS, CodeAI, and Juicemind have full ready-to-use curriculum and other education related features like quizzes.
  • Codecademy, Codédex, and freeCodeCamp have a large number of lessons and are mainly meant for self-directed learning or individual use but are used in some classrooms.

Most of these tools have some free plan or trial and charge for teacher features or lesson access.

Providers typically determine pricing on a per-student or per-teacher basis. As of this writing Pickcode Pro is $1000/year per teacher (the IDE itself is free to use), Codio is $90/student per yer, and CuraCourse has a free tier as well as $20/student or $45/student per year plans. The other providers listed also have free plans and pricing for advanced features available by quote.

The goal of this post was to provide an overview of the landscape for teachers and I encourage you to check out the links throughout the post to check out the specifics of each platform. If you'd like to chat about Pickcode or navigating tools for CS teaching, my email is charlie@pickcode.io (and I won't just tell you Pickcode is best, although it is pretty good 😄).

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