Etherpad is unclaimed —

Etherpad

the editor for documents that matter·etherpad.org

Etherpad is a real-time collaborative document editor that attributes every keystroke to its author and preserves every revision, letting users scrub through a document's full history with a timeslider. It is self-hosted, open source software (Apache 2.0) with no telemetry, extendable through a large plugin ecosystem covering comments, images, tables, drawing, video chat, math, code highlighting, authentication (OAuth/LDAP/OpenID), and optional self-controlled AI integrations. It ships with companion tools including desktop/mobile apps, a command-line client, a terminal editor, an HTTP API, and infrastructure utilities like ueberDB and a scale calculator.

What it's for

collaborative drafting across editor communitiesgovernment and public-sector document drafting under GDPR/sovereignty constraintseducation in jurisdictions where Google Workspace is restrictedcitizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, public consultationsinvestigative journalism requiring authorship and edit-history integrityself-hosted note-taking and document collaboration

Features 19

Agent-native tooling (Go CLI, Claude Code skill, MCP server)
Author colour highlighting
Command-line client for scripting pads
Desktop and mobile native apps (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS)
Docker deployment support
Etherpad Scanner for checking public instance health/security
Full data export
Home Assistant Add-on for self-hosting
HTTP API for pad, group, author, session, chat and content management
Multi-language UI (105 languages)
OAuth/LDAP/OpenID authentication plugins
Per-keystroke author attribution
Plugin system with ~290 plugins (comments, images, tables, drawing, video chat, math, code highlighting, auth)
Real-time collaborative text editing
Scale Calculator for estimating deployment resource needs
Socket.IO Proxy reference for real-time traffic inspection
Terminal editor ('pad') for local file editing and real-time pad collaboration
Timeslider to scrub through document revision history
ueberDB database abstraction layer (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, SQLite, etc.)

At a glance

free tieropen sourceself-hostableAPI

TypeWeb app

DeploymentSelf-hosted

PlatformsWeb, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android

Forgovernments, public-sector institutions, universities and schools, civic-tech and democratic-deliberation projects, newsrooms and investigative journalism teams, IT teams self-hosting software, developers

CompanyThe Etherpad Foundation

Integrations

MySQLPostgreSQLRedisMongoDBSQLiteDockerHome AssistantPrometheusDiscord

Complianceself-reported

GDPR

Resources

Docs

Pricing

Etherpad is free, open-source software with no vendor-stated pricing tiers; users self-host or use free public instances run by third parties.

Self-hostedFree

Free, open-source software; run on your own server. No formal paid tiers stated.