head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs Harper
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars, 4,167 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harper has 17,365 stars, 794 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 170% (46,944 vs 17,365 stars). monaco-editor is written in JavaScript under MIT; Harper is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. monaco-editor has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Harper 5%. Harper was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | Harper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 17K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 794 |
| 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 Harper if
- You want the Harper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Harper fits your workflow better
About monaco-editor
Monaco Editor The Monaco Editor is the fully featured code editor from VS Code. Check out the VS Code docs to see some of the supported features. Try it out Try out the editor and see various examples in our interactive playground. The playground is the best way to learn about how to use the editor, which features is supports, to try out different versions and to create minimal reproducible examples for bug reports. Installing You will get: inside /esm : ESM version of the editor (compatible with e.g. webpack) monaco.d.ts : this specifies the API of the editor (this is what is actually versioned, everything else…
read the full monaco-editor overview →
About Harper
Harper Harper is an English grammar checker designed to be just right. I created it after years of dealing with the shortcomings of the competition. Grammarly was too expensive and too overbearing. Its suggestions lacked context, and were often just plain wrong . Not to mention: it's a privacy nightmare. Everything you write with Grammarly is sent to their servers. Their privacy policy claims they don't sell the data, but that doesn't mean they don't use it to train large language models and god knows what else. Not only that, but the round trip time of the network request makes revising your work all the more…
read the full Harper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or Harper more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars and Harper has 17,365. monaco-editor has the larger community by that measure.
Are monaco-editor and Harper free?
Both are open source. monaco-editor is licensed under MIT and Harper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monaco-editor and Harper?
monaco-editor is written in JavaScript and Harper in Rust. 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 Harper?
Choose monaco-editor if you want the larger community (46,944 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Harper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.