head to head · open source
etherpad vs univer
etherpad has 18,552 GitHub stars, 3,050 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped yesterday. univer has 14,395 stars, 1,303 forks, 151 open issues and last shipped yesterday. etherpad leads on adoption by 29% (18,552 vs 14,395 stars). etherpad is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; univer is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. etherpad has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, univer 9%. univer 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
| etherpad | univer | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick etherpad if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick univer if
- You want the univer 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 univer fits your workflow better
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 →
About univer
Univer is an open source, full stack office SDK for building spreadsheet, document and presentation interfaces inside your own product. Rather than shipping an end user office suite, it gives developers the primitives — a Canvas based renderer, a formula engine, a plugin architecture and a single Facade API — to embed spreadsheet and document editing into a web application or run the same logic headlessly on Node.js.
read the full univer overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etherpad or univer more popular?
etherpad has 18,552 GitHub stars and univer has 14,395. etherpad has the larger community by that measure.
Are etherpad and univer free?
Both are open source. etherpad is licensed under Apache-2.0 and univer under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etherpad and univer?
etherpad is written in TypeScript and univer 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, etherpad or univer?
Choose etherpad if you want the larger community (18,552 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose univer if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.