head to head · open source
monaco-editor vs serenity
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars, 4,167 forks, 859 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serenity has 33,938 stars, 3,488 forks, 739 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monaco-editor leads on adoption by 38% (46,944 vs 33,938 stars). monaco-editor is written in JavaScript under MIT; serenity is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause. monaco-editor has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, serenity 10%. 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 | serenity | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 34K |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| 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 serenity if
- You want the serenity feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and serenity 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 serenity
SerenityOS Graphical Unix like operating system for 64 bit x86, Arm, and RISC V computers. FAQ Documentation Build Instructions About SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late 1990s productivity software and the power user accessibility of late 2000s \ nix. This is a system by us, for us, based on the things we like. You can watch videos of the system being developed on YouTube: Andreas Kling's channel Linus Groh's…
read the full serenity overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monaco-editor or serenity more popular?
monaco-editor has 46,944 GitHub stars and serenity has 33,938. monaco-editor has the larger community by that measure.
Are monaco-editor and serenity free?
Both are open source. monaco-editor is licensed under MIT and serenity under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monaco-editor and serenity?
monaco-editor is written in JavaScript and serenity in C++. 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 serenity?
Choose monaco-editor if you want the larger community (46,944 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose serenity if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.