head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs happy-dom
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars, 4,167 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped yesterday. happy-dom has 4,732 stars, 373 forks, 444 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 892% (46,944 vs 4,732 stars). monaco-editor is written in JavaScript under MIT; happy-dom is written in TypeScript under MIT. monaco-editor has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, happy-dom 8%. happy-dom 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 | happy-dom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 373 |
| 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 happy-dom if
- You want the happy-dom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and happy-dom 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 happy-dom
A JavaScript implementation of a web browser without its graphical user interface. Documentation Getting started Setup as Test Environment DOM Features Custom Elements (Web Components) Declarative Shadow DOM Mutation Observer Tree Walker Fetch API And much more.. Works With Vitest Bun Jest Testing Library Google LitElement Vue React Svelte Angular Sponsors Sponsors Contributing See Contributing Guide. License MIT License © 2019 Present David Ortner
read the full happy-dom overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or happy-dom more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars and happy-dom has 4,732. monaco-editor has the larger community by that measure.
Are monaco-editor and happy-dom free?
Both are open source. monaco-editor is licensed under MIT and happy-dom under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monaco-editor and happy-dom?
monaco-editor is written in JavaScript and happy-dom 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, monaco-editor or happy-dom?
Choose monaco-editor if you want the larger community (46,944 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose happy-dom if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.