TeX Live Alternatives

TeX Live is described as 'Easy way to get up and running with the TeX document production system. It provides a comprehensive TeX system with binaries for most flavors of Unix, including GNU/Linux, and also Windows' and is an app in the news & books category. There are more than 10 alternatives to TeX Live for a variety of platforms, including Mac, Web-based, Windows, Linux and Flathub apps. The best TeX Live alternative is LyX, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like TeX Live are TeXstudio, Overleaf, Kile and MacTeX.

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Alternatives list

  1. LyX icon

    LyX

     202 likes
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    LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG). LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use of a GUI.

    45 LyX alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • Flathub
    • Haiku
    • Chrome OS
    LyX screenshot 1
     

    • LyX is the most popular Windows, Mac & Linux alternative to TeX Live.

    • LyX is the most popular Open Source & free alternative to TeX Live.

    • LyX is Free and Open SourceTeX Live is also Free and Open Source
  2. TeXstudio icon

    TeXstudio

     97 likes
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    TeXstudio is an integrated environment for writing LaTeX documents. Our goal is to make writing LaTeX as easy and comfortable as possible. Therefore TeXstudio has numerous features like syntax-highlighting, integrated viewer, reference checking and various assistants.

    36 TeXstudio alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Flathub
    Main interface (2024) on KDE desktop
     
  4. Overleaf icon

    Overleaf

     69 likes
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    Overleaf, formerly WriteLaTeX, is a collaborative writing and publishing system that makes the whole process of producing academic papers much quicker for both authors and publishers.

    54 Overleaf alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Freemium (Subscription)
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
    • Self-Hosted
    Templates
     

    • Overleaf is the most popular Web-based & Self-Hosted alternative to TeX Live.

    • Overleaf is Freemium and Open SourceTeX Live is Free and Open Source
    • Overleaf is Privacy focusedTeX Live is not according to our users
  5. Kile icon

    Kile

     46 likes
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    Kile is a user-friendly TeX/LaTeX editor by KDE. Kile gives you the ability to use all the functionality of LaTeX in a graphical interface and has interactive preview mechanisms to readily see the results of editing.

    32 Kile alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • KDE Plasma
    • Flathub
    Kile screenshot 1
     
  6. MacTeX icon

    MacTeX

     6 likes
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    MacTeX is a redistribution of TeX Live, a typesetting environment. While TeX Live is designed to be cross-platform (running on Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows), MacTeX includes Mac-specific utilities and front-ends.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
     
  7. MiKTeX icon

    MiKTeX

     56 likes
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    MiKTeX is a typesetting system for the Windows operating system. The distribution includes TeX, pdfTeX and XeTeX.

    11 MiKTeX alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Linux
    The MiKTeX Setup Wizard
     
  9. TeXworks icon

    TeXworks

     18 likes
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    The TeXworks project is an effort to build a simple TeX front-end program (working environment) that will be available for all today’s major desktop operating systems—in particular, MS Windows (XP and Vista), typical GNU/Linux distros and other X11-based systems, and Mac OS X.

    34 TeXworks alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Flathub
    • Arch Linux
    • Debian
    • Fedora
    • openSUSE
    • Ubuntu
    on Linux
     
  10. TeXmacs icon

    TeXmacs

     19 likes
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    GNU TeXmacs is a free scientific editing platform designed to create beautiful technical documents. It provides a unified and user friendly framework for editing structured documents with different types of content: text, math, graphics, slides, etc.

    33 TeXmacs alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Flathub
    • Flatpak
    Micro typography.
     
  11. vTeX icon

    vTeX

     2 likes
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    vTeX is a Pandoc and LaTeX payload for continuous integration. It is customizable. So, it only contains the exact TeX packages that you need. It is intended for use in web development environments. For example, you can generate web pages and beautiful PDFs from the same source...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Online
    • Self-Hosted
    • Vercel
    • GitHub Actions
    • Travis CI
    Using vTeX in vercel is insanely fast!
     
  12. Curvenote icon

    Curvenote

     6 likes
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    Curvenote is a collaborative writing tool designed for open-science and reproducibility. Create & edit technical content in real-time, including equations, references, figures, and interactive plots from Jupyter, then export to any journal template.

    Cost / License

    • Freemium (Subscription)
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
    • Software as a Service (SaaS)
    Curvenote screenshot 1
     

    • Curvenote is the most popular SaaS alternative to TeX Live.

    • Curvenote is Freemium and Open SourceTeX Live is Free and Open Source
  13. SwiftLaTeX icon

    SwiftLaTeX

     3 likes
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    SwiftLaTeX is a Web-browser based editor to create PDF documents such as reports, term projects, slide decks, in the typesetting system LaTeX. In contrast to other web-based editors SwiftLaTeX is true WYSIWYG, What-you-see-is-what-you-get: You edit directly in a representation...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
    • Self-Hosted
    SwiftLaTeX screenshot 1
     
  14. MonsterWriter icon

    MonsterWriter

     2 likes
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    A simple solution to write scientific papers, pillar content or just your personal notes. It aims to combine the benefits of traditional Microsoft Word, LaTeX and Markdown.

    Cost / License

    • Freemium (Pay once)
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    MonsterWriter screenshot 1
     
12 of 23 TeX Live alternatives