Etherpad icon
Etherpad icon

Etherpad

 95 likes

Etherpad is a highly customizable Open Source online editor providing collaborative editing in really real-time.

Etherpad screenshot 1

License model

  • FreeOpen Source

Country of Origin

  • DE flagGermany
  • European Union flagEU

Platforms

  • Online
  • Self-Hosted
  • Sandstorm
  • Cloudron
5 / 5 Avg rating (4)
95likes
4comments
0news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Privacy focused
  2.  Lightweight

Features

  1.  Real time collaboration
  2.  Collaborative writing
  3.  Ad-free
  4.  Team Collaboration
  5.  No registration required
  6.  Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
  7.  Decentralized
  8.  File Versioning

 Tags

  • Node.js
  • collaborative
  • collaboration
  • editors
  • Writing tool
  • document-editor
  • realtime-collaborative-editor

Etherpad News & Activities

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Recent activities

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Etherpad information

AlternativeTo Categories

Office & ProductivityNews & BooksRemote Work & EducationDevelopment

GitHub repository

  •  17,415 Stars
  •  2,928 Forks
  •  147 Open Issues
  •   Updated May 17, 2025 
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Popular alternatives

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Our users have written 4 comments and reviews about Etherpad, and it has gotten 95 likes

Etherpad was added to AlternativeTo by pita on Aug 4, 2011 and this page was last updated Feb 16, 2025. Etherpad is sometimes referred to as Etherpad Lite.

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
Guest
Apr 27, 2019
3

fast page , low RAM consumption , quick collaboration

Guest
Feb 2, 2021
2

It's a great alternative to Google Docs because you do not need to sign in.

dataculi
Jan 28, 2020
3

One of the few Google Docs alternatives that you don't have to self-host (though you can if you want). I think that makes it the most likely to be widely adopted

Eden
Oct 5, 2018
2

I found this used everywhere, for free. I've used it with clients, without a problem. I'm now serving an instance from my own machine. I haven't found a problem yet.

What is Etherpad?

Etherpad is a highly customizable Open Source online editor providing collaborative editing in really real-time.

Collaborating in really real-time No more sending your stuff back and forth via email, just set up a pad, share the link and start collaborating!

Etherpad allows you to edit documents collaboratively in real-time, much like a live multi-player editor that runs in your browser. Write articles, press releases, to-do lists, etc. together with your friends, fellow students or colleagues, all working on the same document at the same time.

All instances provide access to all data through a well-documented API and supports import/export to many major data exchange formats. And if the built-in feature set isn't enough for you, there's tons of plugins that allow you to customize your instance to suit your needs.

You don't need to set up a server and install Etherpad in order to use it. Just pick one of publicly available instances that friendly people from everywhere around the world have set up. Alternatively, you can set up your own instance by following our installation guide

This opensource project is based on the original Etherpad (by Appjet) icon Etherpad (by Appjet) , made from AppJet Inc. , later acquired by Google which open-sourced the key libraries required to create Etherpad Lite.

Official Links