head to head · open source
slate vs mocha
slate has 31,747 GitHub stars, 3,306 forks, 653 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. mocha has 22,912 stars, 3,144 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped yesterday. slate leads on adoption by 39% (31,747 vs 22,912 stars). slate is written in TypeScript under MIT; mocha is written in JavaScript under MIT. slate has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, mocha 14%. mocha was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (browser, javascript), 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 | mocha | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 23K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| 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 mocha if
- You want the mocha feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mocha 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 mocha
☕️ Classic, reliable, trusted test framework for Node.js and the browser ☕️ Links Documentation Release Notes / History / Changes Code of Conduct Contributing Development Discord (ask questions here!) Issue Tracker Backers Become a backer and show your support to our open source project on our site. Sponsors Does your company use Mocha? Ask your manager or marketing team if your company would be interested in supporting our project. Support will allow the maintainers to dedicate more time for maintenance and new features for everyone. Also, your company's logo will show on GitHub and on our site who doesn't want…
read the full mocha overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is slate or mocha more popular?
slate has 31,747 GitHub stars and mocha has 22,912. slate has the larger community by that measure.
Are slate and mocha free?
Both are open source. slate is licensed under MIT and mocha under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between slate and mocha?
slate is written in TypeScript and mocha 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, slate or mocha?
Choose slate if you want the larger community (31,747 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mocha if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.