head to head · open source
cobalt vs etherpad
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars, 3,798 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. etherpad has 18,552 stars, 3,050 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cobalt leads on adoption by 133% (43,316 vs 18,552 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; etherpad is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, etherpad 16%. etherpad 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 | etherpad | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 19K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Svelte | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 43K 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 etherpad if
- You want the etherpad feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and etherpad fits your workflow better
About cobalt
cobalt is a media downloader built around a single promise: paste a link, get the file, move on. It is a monorepo containing the source for an API, a web frontend, and related packages, written primarily in Svelte and TypeScript. The project lives in the modern web and JavaScript ecosystem, and its public surface is hosted at cobalt.tools, while the full codebase is published under the AGPL 3.0 license.
read the full cobalt overview →
About etherpad
Etherpad is a real time collaborative document editor, written in TypeScript and released under Apache 2.0, for teams and institutions that need every keystroke attributed to its author, every revision preserved, and all text hosted on infrastructure they control.
read the full etherpad overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or etherpad more popular?
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars and etherpad has 18,552. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and etherpad free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and etherpad under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and etherpad?
cobalt is written in Svelte and etherpad 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 etherpad?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (43,316 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose etherpad if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.