head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs Harper
monaco-editor has 46,758 GitHub stars, 4,128 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Harper has 15,469 stars, 632 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 202% (46,758 vs 15,469 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 4%. 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 | ★ 15K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-13 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 632 |
| 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 is the fully featured code editor from VS Code, packaged as an npm library so that developers can embed the same editing experience inside their own browser based applications.
read the full monaco-editor overview →
About Harper
Harper is offline, privacy first grammar checker for English. It lives in productivity, browser extension, developer tools, and text editing ecosystem. Project is open source under Apache 2.0. GitHub metadata shows 15373 stars, 627 forks, and 896 open issues. Last push is 2026 09 14. Category is Productivity & Utilities / Browsers & Extensions. It uses Rust for core, WebAssembly for browser loading, language server for editors, JavaScript package for web and Node.js apps. It solves slow, costly, network dependent grammar checking. It replaces Grammarly and LanguageTool as named in README. Grammarly sends writing …
read the full Harper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or Harper more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,758 GitHub stars and Harper has 15,469. 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 (46,758 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Harper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.