head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs Mercury
monaco-editor has 46,758 GitHub stars, 4,128 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Mercury has 1,541 stars, 42 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 2,934% (46,758 vs 1,541 stars). monaco-editor is written in JavaScript under MIT; Mercury is written in JavaScript under MPL-2.0. monaco-editor has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Mercury 3%. monaco-editor 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 | Mercury | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-13 | 2026-08-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 42 |
| 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 Mercury if
- You want the Mercury feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and Mercury 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 Mercury
Mercury is a web browser project in the Firefox ecosystem. It is a fork of Firefox that combines compiler optimizations with patches from Librewolf, Waterfox, Ghostery, and BetterFox. The project describes itself as the Firefox equivalent of Thorium, which is a Chromium fork. Mercury is licensed under MPL 2.0, and its repository topics include browser, privacy, optimization, and Firefox fork.
read the full Mercury overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or Mercury more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,758 GitHub stars and Mercury has 1,541. monaco-editor has the larger community by that measure.
Are monaco-editor and Mercury free?
Both are open source. monaco-editor is licensed under MIT and Mercury under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monaco-editor and Mercury?
monaco-editor is written in JavaScript and Mercury in JavaScript. 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 Mercury?
Choose monaco-editor if you want the larger community (46,758 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Mercury if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.