head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs BrowserOS
monaco-editor has 46,779 GitHub stars, 4,132 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. BrowserOS has 13,718 stars, 1,459 forks, 82 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 241% (46,779 vs 13,718 stars). monaco-editor is written in JavaScript under MIT; BrowserOS is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. monaco-editor has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, BrowserOS 11%. BrowserOS was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| monaco-editor | BrowserOS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-13 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick monaco-editor if
- You weight community size — 47K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick BrowserOS if
- You want the BrowserOS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and BrowserOS fits your workflow better
About monaco-editor
Monaco Editor is the fully featured code editor from VS Code, packaged as an npm library so that developers can embed the same editing experience inside their own browser based applications.
read the full monaco-editor overview →
About BrowserOS
BrowserOS is an open source agentic browser, written in TypeScript under AGPL 3.0, that puts AI agents inside a real Chromium browser on the user's own machine so they can work with real logged in accounts, and it is aimed at people who already use an agent harness such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or any MCP agent and want that agent to handle web tasks instead of a sandbox.
read the full BrowserOS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or BrowserOS more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,779 GitHub stars and BrowserOS has 13,718. monaco-editor has the larger community by that measure.
Are monaco-editor and BrowserOS free?
Both are open source. monaco-editor is licensed under MIT and BrowserOS under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monaco-editor and BrowserOS?
monaco-editor is written in JavaScript and BrowserOS in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, monaco-editor or BrowserOS?
Choose monaco-editor if you want the larger community (46,779 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose BrowserOS if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.