head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs opal
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars, 4,167 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opal has 4,930 stars, 338 forks, 152 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 852% (46,944 vs 4,930 stars). monaco-editor is written in JavaScript under MIT; opal is written in Ruby under MIT. monaco-editor has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, opal 7%. 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 | opal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 338 |
| 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 opal if
- You want the opal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and opal 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 opal
Opal Opal is a Ruby to JavaScript source to source compiler, shipping with an implementation of the Ruby corelib and stdlib. Write Ruby, run it anywhere JavaScript runs — the browser, Node.js, Deno, Bun, QuickJS. Why Opal A real Ruby implementation. Opal ships its own corelib and stdlib and is validated against [ruby/spec][ruby spec], the same suite CRuby uses. A JavaScript host imposes limits — those are catalogued in Unsupported Features. Source to source, no runtime interpreter. Ruby compiles to plain JavaScript ahead of time, so there is no VM to download and no interpreter loop at runtime. Two way…
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or opal more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars and opal has 4,930. monaco-editor has the larger community by that measure.
Are monaco-editor and opal free?
Both are open source. monaco-editor is licensed under MIT and opal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monaco-editor and opal?
monaco-editor is written in JavaScript and opal in Ruby. 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 opal?
Choose monaco-editor if you want the larger community (46,944 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose opal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.