Trae
ByteDance's AI-native IDE — VS Code fork with autonomous SOLO mode.
About
Trae (trae.ai) is ByteDance's AI-native IDE: a VS Code fork (extensions and settings carry over) with a Builder agent and an autonomous SOLO mode that scaffolds projects from a prompt, plus MCP support and a cloud IDE.
Freemium: free tier with 5,000 completions/mo; paid tiers Lite $3, Pro $10, Pro+ $30, Ultra $100/mo (token-based). Caveat: in 2025 researchers reported Trae sent telemetry even with the toggle off — ByteDance said the switch covered only part of it. Enable Privacy Mode and verify before trusting it with sensitive code.
What it can do
- VS Code-compatible IDE
- SOLO autonomous agent mode
- Builder agent
- MCP support
- Cloud IDE in the browser
Setup
- Download from trae.ai (macOS, Windows, Linux).
- Import VS Code settings/extensions on first launch.
- Use Builder for assisted edits, SOLO mode for autonomous builds.
- Enable Privacy Mode in settings.
Prerequisites
Desktop OS; Trae account for cloud features.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 7/10
Scored 7/10 (metrics tier). Solid product with aggressive pricing ($10 Pro vs Cursor's $20), but docked for the 2025 telemetry controversy and proprietary licensing. Adoption is a provider-tier estimate (thinner evidence). Metrics tier.
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 7.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 7.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 4.5/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 7.0/10
- · provider-tier estimate — thinner evidence (no public adoption metric)
- · ByteDance IDE; no public repo — adoption estimated from market presence
- · released 196 days ago
- · manual review: ByteDance VS Code-fork IDE; SOLO agent mode; freemium from free to $100/mo; 2025 telemetry-over-collection report is a caveat; license: proprietary
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.