Etherpad is an open source real-time collaborative text editor you self-host — a Google Docs alternative where multiple people edit the same pad live, every keystroke color-coded by author and every revision replayable.

What is Etherpad?

Etherpad is an open source real-time collaborative text editor that you run on your own server. Multiple people open the same “pad” in a browser and edit it together live, with each person’s writing highlighted in their own color. A built-in timeslider replays the document’s entire edit history character by character.

What is Etherpad best for?

Etherpad suits teams and institutions that want live shared editing without putting their documents on a third party’s cloud — universities, journalists, public agencies, and open source projects that need data sovereignty. It shines for fast, lightweight collaboration: shared meeting notes, drafting, brainstorming, and pair-writing rather than heavily formatted reports.

What can Etherpad do?

Edit a document in real time with unlimited simultaneous authors, each shown in a distinct color
Scrub the full revision history with the timeslider and restore any past state
Extend the core with 100+ plugins — comments, tables, Markdown, code highlighting, WebRTC video chat, and more
Import and export pads as HTML, plain text, Markdown, PDF, and Microsoft Word
Embed pads in other sites and drive everything through a full HTTP API
Run it in 105 languages, with optional AI features added as plugins you control

Where does Etherpad fall short?

Formatting is deliberately minimal — bold, italics, lists, and headings, but nothing close to Google Docs’ page layout, styles, or embedded media, so it’s a poor fit for polished final documents.
Very large pads or a high number of concurrent editors on one pad can cause noticeable lag.
It’s maintained by a small volunteer team that is actively seeking more contributors, so new features and fixes can land slowly compared with commercial editors.

Is Etherpad free?

Yes — Etherpad is fully free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license, with no paid tier or feature gating. You only pay for the server you run it on. There’s no official managed cloud from the project, though third-party hosts and free public instances exist for trying it out.

What does Etherpad replace?

Etherpad is a self-hosted alternative to Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, and Quip for real-time collaborative writing. It covers the core “edit this document together, right now” job while keeping every pad on infrastructure you own — trading rich formatting and polish for privacy and control.

FAQ

Is Etherpad open source? Yes. Etherpad is released under the Apache License 2.0, a permissive OSI-approved license, and its full source is on GitHub.

Can I self-host Etherpad for free? Yes. The software is free; your only cost is hosting. It runs on Node.js (version 24 or newer), and for production you point it at a MySQL or PostgreSQL database.

Is Etherpad a good Google Docs alternative? For real-time collaborative editing and privacy, yes — you keep full control of your data. If you need rich formatting, spreadsheets, or a zero-maintenance hosted service, Google Docs still does more out of the box.

What do I need to run Etherpad? A server with Node.js ≥ 24 and, for production, a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. An official Docker image makes deployment straightforward.