Etherpad<br>About<br>Download<br>Apps & Tools<br>Contribute<br>Links<br>Contact
About<br>Download<br>Apps & Tools<br>Contribute<br>Links<br>Contact<br>Toggle Theme
Etherpad — the editor for documents that matter .<br>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.<br>LinuxmacOSWindows<br>curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ether/etherpad/master/bin/installer.sh | shCopy<br>Needs git and Node.js ≥ 24. Then cd etherpad && pnpm run prod and open http://localhost:9001. Other install options.
Sixteen years of being trusted with documents that matter
200 Pluginsextend without forking
105 Languagestranslated by a global community
Thousands of InstancesRaspberry Pis to data centres
Millions of UsersWikimedia, governments, schools
Three things that make Etherpad different<br>Authorship is the product.<br>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, watching it come into being. Author colours make collaboration visible at a glance — not buried in a menu. Other editors hide the history. Etherpad's history is the point.
Sovereignty is the default.<br>Etherpad runs on your server, under your governance. No telemetry. No upsells. No silent updates that change the deal. The code is Apache 2.0. The data format is open. Full data export is built in. The history is yours, your users', your institution's — never a third party's.
Malleability is structural.<br>Etherpad ships small and grows with you. 290 plugins for comments, images, tables, drawing, video chat, math, code highlighting, OAuth/LDAP/OpenID auth, and more — including AI on your terms, pointed at the model you choose, running on infrastructure you control. SaaS competitors decide for you. Etherpad lets you decide.
You don't need to set up a server to try it. Pick one of the publicly available instances run by friendly people around the world — or set up your own by following our installation guide.
Who uses Etherpad<br>For more than a decade, Etherpad has quietly underpinned the documents that matter to:<br>Wikimedia Foundation — collaborative drafting across editor communities.<br>Public-sector institutions across the EU — including organisations that legally cannot use US-cloud SaaS for sovereignty and GDPR reasons.<br>Universities and schools worldwide — including jurisdictions where Google Workspace is no longer permitted in education.<br>Civic-tech and democratic-deliberation projects — citizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, public consultations.<br>Newsrooms and investigative journalism teams — where authorship and editing history matter for legal and editorial integrity.<br>Tens of thousands of self-hosted instances — run by IT teams who chose Etherpad because it is theirs.
AI on your terms — or not at all<br>Most editors decided AI for you. They added it to the toolbar, turned it on by default, sent your text to a model you can't choose, on infrastructure you can't audit, under terms you didn't write.<br>Etherpad doesn't.<br>AI in Etherpad is a plugin you install — pointed at the model you choose, running on the infrastructure you control, through code you can audit. You can swap providers. You can run a local model. You can turn it off. You can never turn it on.<br>For regulated industries, public-sector institutions, journalism, healthcare, legal, and anyone who cannot ship their documents to a third-party model — this isn't a nice-to-have. It's the only acceptable posture.<br>Browse AI plugins →
Add Functionality<br>Etherpad is very customizable through plugins. Instructions can be found in the plugin wiki article
Customize Appearance
Download Version 3.3.3
Also, see our installation instructions.<br>Linux/MacWindows<br>Looking for older releases?
More from Etherpad<br>Etherpad is more than the editor. The Foundation maintains a family of official apps, clients and tools — plus a large plugin ecosystem — to help you extend, run, embed and scale Etherpad.<br>Plugins<br>Hundreds of community plugins add features, themes and integrations. Browse the directory and extend your Etherpad however you like.Desktop & Mobile App<br>Run Etherpad as a native app on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS — collaborate without opening a browser.Command-line Client<br>Create, read and edit pads straight from your terminal. Great for scripting and automating your Etherpad instance.pad — Terminal Editor<br>A nano-class terminal text editor. Edit files locally, or join any pad to collaborate in real time — your edits and everyone else's sync live, right in your terminal.Printing Press<br>Agent-native Etherpad tooling — a Go CLI, a Claude Code skill and an MCP server, generated from a spec so AI agents can drive Etherpad.Etherpad Scanner<br>Security-focused scanner for public Etherpad instances — check whether an instance is healthy, correctly configured and up to date.Socket.IO Proxy<br>A reference proxy for Etherpad's real-time Socket.IO traffic —...