head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs plasmo
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars, 4,167 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped yesterday. plasmo has 13,172 stars, 466 forks, 371 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 256% (46,944 vs 13,172 stars). monaco-editor is written in JavaScript under MIT; plasmo is written in TypeScript under MIT. monaco-editor has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, plasmo 4%. 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 (typescript), 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 | plasmo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 466 |
| 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 plasmo if
- You want the plasmo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and plasmo 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 plasmo
English 简体中文 Tiếng Việt Deutsch French Indonesian Русский Turkish 日本語 한국어 Production Cloud: We've built a cloud offering for browser extensions called Itero. Check it out if you want instant beta testing and more awesome features. Plasmo Framework The Plasmo Framework is a battery packed browser extension SDK made by hackers for hackers. Build your product and stop worrying about config files and the odd peculiarities of building browser extensions. It's like Next.js for browser extensions! Highlighted Features First class React + Typescript Support Declarative Development Content Scripts UI Tab Pages Live…
read the full plasmo overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or plasmo more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars and plasmo has 13,172. monaco-editor has the larger community by that measure.
Are monaco-editor and plasmo free?
Both are open source. monaco-editor is licensed under MIT and plasmo under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monaco-editor and plasmo?
monaco-editor is written in JavaScript and plasmo 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 plasmo?
Choose monaco-editor if you want the larger community (46,944 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose plasmo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.