Etherpad
Highly customizable online editor providing collaborative editing in real-time.
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Fetched · June 5, 2026 ★ 18,390 Latest: v3.2.0 Updated: June 5, 2026
README
# Etherpad — the editor for documents that matter
> Real-time collaborative editing where authorship is the default, your server is the only server, and you decide what AI (if any) ever touches your text.
## About
**Etherpad is a real-time collaborative editor for documents that matter.**
Every keystroke is attributed to its author. Every revision is preserved. The timeslider lets you scrub through a document's entire history, character by character. Author colours make collaboration visible at a glance — not buried in a menu.
Etherpad runs on your server, under your governance. No telemetry. No upsells. AI is a plugin you install, pointed at the model you choose, running on infrastructure you control — not a feature decided for you in a boardroom you weren't in. See [PRIVACY.md](PRIVACY.md) for the two opt-out network calls Etherpad's own code makes and how to disable each.
The code is Apache 2.0. The data format is open. It [scales to thousands of simultaneous editors per pad](http://scale.etherpad.org/). Translated into 105 languages. Extended through hundreds of plugins. Used by Wikimedia, governments, public-sector institutions, and self-hosters worldwide since 2009.
[Full data export](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/wiki/Understanding-Etherpad's-Full-Data-Export-capabilities) is built in. The history is yours.
## Try it out
[Try out a public Etherpad instance](https://scanner.etherpad.org)
## Project Status
Etherpad has been doing the same thing — well — since 2009. No pivots, no acquisitions, no enshittification. Maintained by a small volunteer team.
**We are actively looking for maintainers.** If you have experience with Node.js, real-time systems, or institutional collaboration tooling and you want to work on infrastructure that thousands of organisations quietly depend on, please [open an issue](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/issues) or contact [John McLear](https://github.com/JohnMcLear).
### Code Quality
[](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/actions/workflows/codeql-analysis.yml)
### Testing
[](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/actions/workflows/backend-tests.yml)
[](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/actions/workflows/load-test.yml)
[](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/actions/workflows/rate-limit.yml)
[](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/actions/workflows/docker.yml)
[](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/actions/workflows/frontend-admin-tests.yml)
[](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/actions/workflows/frontend-tests.yml)
### Engagement
[](https://hub.docker.com/r/etherpad/etherpad)
[](https://discord.com/invite/daEjfhw)
[](https://etherpad.org/plugins)
## Who uses Etherpad
For more than a decade, Etherpad has quietly underpinned the documents that matter to:
- **Wikimedia Foundation** — collaborative drafting across editor communities.
- **Public-sector institutions across the EU** — including organisations that legally cannot use US-cloud SaaS for sovereignty and GDPR reasons.
- **Universities and schools worldwide** — including jurisdictions where Google Workspace is no longer permitted in education.
- **Civic-tech and democratic-deliberation projects** — citizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, public consultations.
- **Newsrooms and investigative journalism teams** — where authorship and editing history matter for legal and editorial integrity.
- **Tens of thousands of self-hosted instances** worldwide, run by IT teams who chose Etherpad because it is theirs.
[Public Etherpad Instances for you to try out. Third party instances not provided by the Etherpad foundation](https://scanner.etherpad.org/).
## Installation
### Quick install (one-liner)
The fastest way to get Etherpad running. Requires `git` and Node.js >= 24.
**macOS / Linux / WSL:**
```sh
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ether/etherpad/master/bin/installer.sh | sh
```
**Windows (PowerShell):**
```powershell
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ether/etherpad/master/bin/installer.ps1 | iex
```
Both installers clone Etherpad into `./etherpad-lite`, install dependencies, and
build the frontend. When the installer finishes, run:
```sh
cd etherpad-lite && pnpm run prod
```
Then open <http://localhost:9001>.
To install and start in one go:
```sh
# macOS / Linux / WSL
ETHERPAD_RUN=1 sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ether/etherpad/master/bin/installer.sh)"
```
```powershell
# Windows
$env:ETHERPAD_RUN=1; irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ether/etherpad/master/bin/installer.ps1 | iex
```
### Docker-Compose
The official image is published to both Docker Hub (`etherpad/etherpad`) and GitHub Container Registry (`ghcr.io/ether/etherpad`) with identical tags. Use whichever suits your environment; GHCR avoids Docker Hub's anonymous pull rate limits.
```yaml
services:
app:
user: "0:0"
image: etherpad/etherpad:latest # or: ghcr.io/ether/etherpad:latest
tty: true
stdin_open: true
volumes:
- plugins:/opt/etherpad-lite/src/plugin_packages
- etherpad-var:/opt/etherpad-lite/var
depends_on:
- postgres
environment:
NODE_ENV: production
ADMIN_PASSWORD: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_APP_ADMIN_PASSWORD:-admin}
DB_CHARSET: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_APP_DB_CHARSET:-utf8mb4}
DB_HOST: postgres
DB_NAME: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_POSTGRES_DATABASE:-etherpad}
DB_PASS: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_POSTGRES_PASSWORD:-admin}
DB_PORT: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_POSTGRES_PORT:-5432}
DB_TYPE: "postgres"
DB_USER: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_POSTGRES_USER:-admin}
# For now, the env var DEFAULT_PAD_TEXT cannot be unset or empty; it seems to be mandatory in the latest version of etherpad
DEFAULT_PAD_TEXT: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_APP_DEFAULT_PAD_TEXT:- }
DISABLE_IP_LOGGING: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_APP_DISABLE_IP_LOGGING:-false}
SOFFICE: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_APP_SOFFICE:-null}
TRUST_PROXY: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_APP_TRUST_PROXY:-true}
restart: always
ports:
- "${DOCKER_COMPOSE_APP_PORT_PUBLISHED:-9001}:${DOCKER_COMPOSE_APP_PORT_TARGET:-9001}"
postgres:
image: postgres:15-alpine
environment:
POSTGRES_DB: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_POSTGRES_DATABASE:-etherpad}
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_POSTGRES_PASSWORD:-admin}
POSTGRES_PORT: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_POSTGRES_PORT:-5432}
POSTGRES_USER: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_POSTGRES_USER:-admin}
PGDATA: /var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata
restart: always
# Exposing the port is not needed unless you want to access this database instance from the host.
# Be careful when other postgres docker container are running on the same port
# ports:
# - "5432:5432"
volumes:
- postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
volumes:
postgres_data:
plugins:
etherpad-var:
```
### Requirements
[Node.js](https://nodejs.org/) >= 24.
### Windows, macOS, Linux
1. Download the latest Node.js runtime from [nodejs.org](https://nodejs.org/).
2. Install pnpm: `npm install -g pnpm` (Administrator privileges may be required).
3. Clone the repository: `git clone -b master`
4. Run `pnpm i`
5. Run `pnpm run build:etherpad`
6. Run `pnpm run prod`
7. Visit `http://localhost:9001` in your browser.
### Docker container
Find [here](doc/docker.adoc) information on running Etherpad in a container.
## Plugins
Etherpad is very customizable through plugins.
### Available Plugins
For a list of available plugins, see the [plugins
site](https://static.etherpad.org).
### Plugin Installation
You can install plugins from the admin web interface (e.g.,
http://127.0.0.1:9001/admin/plugins).
Alternatively, you can install plugins from the command line:
```sh
cd /path/to/etherpad-lite
pnpm run plugins i ep_${plugin_name}
```
Also see [the plugin wiki
article](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/wiki/Available-Plugins).
### Suggested Plugins
Run the following command in your Etherpad folder to get all of the features
visible in the above demo gif:
```sh
pnpm run plugins i \
ep_align \
ep_comments_page \
ep_embedded_hyperlinks2 \
ep_font_color \
ep_headings2 \
ep_markdown \
ep_webrtc
```
For user authentication, you are encouraged to run an [OpenID
Connect](https://openid.net/connect/) identity provider (OP) and install the
following plugins:
* [ep_openid_connect](https://github.com/ether/ep_openid_connect#readme) to
authenticate against your OP.
* [ep_guest](https://github.com/ether/ep_guest#readme) to create a
"guest" account that has limited access (e.g., read-only access).
* [ep_user_displayname](https://github.com/ether/ep_user_displayname#readme)
to automatically populate each user's displayed name from your OP.
* [ep_stable_authorid](https://github.com/ether/ep_stable_authorid#readme) so
that each user's chosen color, display name, comment ownership, etc. is
strongly linked to their account.
### Upgrade Etherpad
Run the following command in your Etherpad folder to upgrade
1. Stop any running Etherpad (manual, systemd ...)
2. Get present version
```sh
git -P tag --contains
```
3. List versions available
```sh
git -P tag --list "v*" --merged
```
4. Select the version
```sh
git checkout v2.2.5
git switch -c v2.2.5
```
5. Upgrade Etherpad
```sh
./bin/run.sh
```
6. Stop with [CTRL-C]
7. Restart your Etherpad service
## Next Steps
### Tweak the settings
You can modify the settings in `settings.json`. If you need to handle multiple
settings files, you can pass the path to a settings file to `bin/run.sh`
using the `-s|--settings` option: this allows you to run multiple Etherpad
instances from the same installation. Similarly, `--credentials` can be used to
give a settings override file, `--apikey` to give a different APIKEY.txt file
and `--sessionkey` to give a non-default `SESSIONKEY.txt`. **Each configuration
parameter can also be set via an environment variable**, using the syntax
`"${ENV_VAR}"` or `"${ENV_VAR:default_value}"`. For details, refer to
`settings.json.template`. Once you have access to your `/admin` section,
settings can be modified through the web browser.
If you are planning to use Etherpad in a production environment, you should use
a dedicated database such as `mysql`, since the `dirtyDB` database driver is
only for testing and/or development purposes.
### Secure your installation
If you have enabled authentication in `users` section in `settings.json`, it is
a good security practice to **store hashes instead of plain text passwords** in
that file. This is _especially_ advised if you are running a production
installation.
Please install [ep_hash_auth plugin](https://www.npmjs.com/package/ep_hash_auth)
and configure it. If you prefer, `ep_hash_auth` also gives you the option of
storing the users in a custom directory in the file system, without having to
edit `settings.json` and restart Etherpad each time.
### Customize the style with skin variants
Open http://127.0.0.1:9001/p/test#skinvariantsbuilder in your browser and start
playing!
## Helpful resources
The [wiki](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/wiki) is your one-stop
resource for Tutorials and How-to's.
Documentation can be found in `doc/`.
## Development
### Things you should know
You can debug Etherpad using `bin/debugRun.sh`.
You can run Etherpad quickly launching `bin/fastRun.sh`. It's convenient for
developers and advanced users. Be aware that it will skip the dependencies
update, so remember to run `bin/installDeps.sh` after installing a new
dependency or upgrading version.
If you want to find out how Etherpad's `Easysync` works (the library that makes
it really realtime), start with this
[PDF](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/raw/master/doc/easysync/easysync-full-description.pdf)
(complex, but worth reading).
### Contributing
Read our [**Developer
Guidelines**](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)
### HTTP API
Etherpad is designed to be easily embeddable and provides a [HTTP
API](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/wiki/HTTP-API) that allows your web
application to manage pads, users and groups. It is recommended to use the
[available client
implementations](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/wiki/HTTP-API-client-libraries)
in order to interact with this API.
OpenAPI (previously swagger) definitions for the API are exposed under
`/api/openapi.json`.
### jQuery plugin
There is a [jQuery plugin](https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite-jquery-plugin)
that helps you to embed Pads into your website.
### Plugin Framework
Etherpad offers a plugin framework, allowing you to easily add your own
features. By default your Etherpad is extremely light-weight and it's up to you
to customize your experience. Once you have Etherpad installed you should [visit
the plugin page](https://static.etherpad.org/) and take control.
### Translations / Localizations (i18n / l10n)
Etherpad comes with translations into all languages thanks to the team at
[TranslateWiki](https://translatewiki.net/).
If you require translations in [plugins](https://static.etherpad.org/) please
send pull request to each plugin individually.
## FAQ
Visit the **[FAQ](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/wiki/FAQ)**.
## Get in touch
The official channel for contacting the development team is via the [GitHub
issues](https://github.com/ether/etherpad/issues).
For **responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities**, please write a mail to the
maintainers (a.mux@inwind.it and contact@etherpad.org).
Join the official [Etherpad Discord
Channel](https://discord.com/invite/daEjfhw).
## License
[Apache License v2](http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html)
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