head to head · open source
slate vs chromium
slate has 31,747 GitHub stars, 3,306 forks, 653 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. chromium has 25,223 stars, 9,398 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. slate leads on adoption by 26% (31,747 vs 25,223 stars). slate is written in TypeScript under MIT; chromium is written in various languages under BSD-3-Clause. slate has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, chromium 37%. chromium 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
| slate | chromium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 25K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | — |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 9.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick slate if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick chromium if
- You want the chromium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- You evaluated both and chromium fits your workflow better
About slate
A completely customizable framework for building rich text editors. Why? · Principles · Demo · Examples · Documentation · Contributing! Slate lets you build rich, intuitive editors like those in Medium, Dropbox Paper or Google Docs—which are becoming table stakes for applications on the web—without your codebase getting mired in complexity. It can do this because all of its logic is implemented with a series of plugins, so you aren't ever constrained by what is or isn't in "core". You can think of it like a pluggable implementation of contenteditable built on top of React. It was inspired by libraries like…
read the full slate overview →
About chromium
Chromium Chromium is an open source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all users to experience the web. The project's web site is To check out the source code locally, don't use git clone ! Instead, follow the instructions on how to get the code. Documentation in the source is rooted in docs/README.md. Learn how to Get Around the Chromium Source Code Directory Structure. For historical reasons, there are some small top level directories. Now the guidance is that new top level directories are for product (e.g. Chrome, Android WebView, Ash). Even if these products have…
read the full chromium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is slate or chromium more popular?
slate has 31,747 GitHub stars and chromium has 25,223. slate has the larger community by that measure.
Are slate and chromium free?
Both are open source. slate is licensed under MIT and chromium under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between slate and chromium?
slate is written in TypeScript and chromium in various languages. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, slate or chromium?
Choose slate if you want the larger community (31,747 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose chromium if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.