head to head · open source
cobalt vs blocksuite
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars, 4,031 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. blocksuite has 6,083 stars, 565 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cobalt leads on adoption by 652% (45,722 vs 6,083 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; blocksuite is written in TypeScript under MPL-2.0. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, blocksuite 9%. blocksuite was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (collaboration), 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
| cobalt | blocksuite | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Svelte | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 565 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 46K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick blocksuite if
- You want the blocksuite feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and blocksuite fits your workflow better
About cobalt
best way to save what you love cobalt.tools 💬 community discord server 🐦 twitter 🦋 bluesky cobalt is a media downloader that doesn't piss you off. it's friendly, efficient, and doesn't have ads, trackers, paywalls or other nonsense. paste the link, get the file, move on. that simple, just how it should be. cobalt monorepo this monorepo includes source code for api, frontend, and related packages: api tree & readme web tree & readme packages tree it also includes documentation in the docs tree: how to run a cobalt instance how to protect a cobalt instance cobalt api instance environment variables cobalt api…
read the full cobalt overview →
About blocksuite
BlockSuite Overview People who are really serious about editor should make their own framework. BlockSuite is a toolkit for building editors and collaborative applications. It implements a series of content editing infrastructures, UI components and editors independently. You can consider BlockSuite as a UI component library for building various editors, based on a minimized vanilla framework as their runtime. With BlockSuite, you can: Reuse multiple first party BlockSuite editors: PageEditor : A comprehensive block based document editor, offering extensive customization and flexibility. EdgelessEditor : A…
read the full blocksuite overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or blocksuite more popular?
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars and blocksuite has 6,083. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and blocksuite free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and blocksuite under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and blocksuite?
cobalt is written in Svelte and blocksuite 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, cobalt or blocksuite?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (45,722 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose blocksuite if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.