Etherpad
Highly customizable online editor providing collaborative editing in real-time.
Actively maintained with regular releases.
Commit activity more than 77% of tracked projects; popularity more than 87%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
| Stars | 19k |
|---|---|
| Latest release | v3.3.6 · 21 Sept 2026 |
| Repo updated | 25 Sept 2026 |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 |
| Built with | Nodejs, Docker |
Is Etherpad actively maintained?
Development is ongoing. The repository recorded 856 commits over the same window, and the last three months alone account for 273 of them.
The most recent tagged release, v3.3.6, shipped within the last month — a current, installable version exists today.
Among the 6 office suites projects we track, Etherpad currently has the highest health score.
What Etherpad actually does
Etherpad is a web-based text editor that allows multiple users to write and edit documents concurrently in real time. As typing occurs, every change is instantly synchronised and displayed to all active participants in the same browser session. It is designed to be extensively customised and integrated into existing workflows.
Best fit: Teams or organisations that require synchronous, multi-user text editing hosted entirely on their own infrastructure.
Worth knowing: Self-hosting involves managing real-time synchronisation state, which can increase operational overhead compared to static document storage.
Deployment notes
You will typically deploy this via Docker, fronted by a reverse proxy to handle TLS termination, with persistent storage configured for user data.
Etherpad as a replacement for
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