head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs chromium
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars, 4,167 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chromium has 25,223 stars, 9,398 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 86% (46,944 vs 25,223 stars). monaco-editor is written in JavaScript under MIT; chromium is written in various languages under BSD-3-Clause. monaco-editor has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, chromium 37%. chromium 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 | chromium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 25K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | — |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 9.4K |
| 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 chromium if
- You want the chromium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- You evaluated both and chromium 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 chromium
Chromium Chromium is an open source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all users to experience the web. The project's web site is To check out the source code locally, don't use git clone ! Instead, follow the instructions on how to get the code. Documentation in the source is rooted in docs/README.md. Learn how to Get Around the Chromium Source Code Directory Structure. For historical reasons, there are some small top level directories. Now the guidance is that new top level directories are for product (e.g. Chrome, Android WebView, Ash). Even if these products have…
read the full chromium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or chromium more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars and chromium has 25,223. monaco-editor has the larger community by that measure.
Are monaco-editor and chromium free?
Both are open source. monaco-editor is licensed under MIT and chromium under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monaco-editor and chromium?
monaco-editor is written in JavaScript and chromium in various languages. 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 chromium?
Choose monaco-editor if you want the larger community (46,944 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose chromium if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.