Plate vs ProseMirror
Plate
platejs.orgProseMirror
prosemirror.netSide by side
| Figure | Plate | ProseMirror |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · Rich Text Editor Software | 8.0 (#11) | 8.4 (#6) |
| Architecture | Plate provides a headless editor runtime, composable plugins, and optional Plate UI components. | ProseMirror is modular, pluggable, largely functional and immutable, and unopinionated. |
| Collaboration | Yjs collaboration supports IndexedDB, Hocuspocus, WebRTC, awareness, remote cursors, and custom providers. | It supports real-time collaborative editing, allowing multiple people to edit the same document simultaneously. |
| Installation | Official setup paths include Plate UI, Next.js, React, RSC, Node.js, and manual installation. | The official site says the easiest way to install ProseMirror is with npm. |
| License | The platejs npm package is licensed under MIT. | The project is released under the MIT license and the homepage says users are legally free to use it commercially. |
| Support | The project directs users to GitHub and Discord for help and contributions. | The project directs questions and discussion to its forum and bugs to its issue tracker, with a code of conduct for communication. |
| What it does | Plate is a React framework for building rich-text editors. | ProseMirror is a toolkit for building rich-text editors on the web. |
Plans
In their own words
Plate
Plate is a React framework for building rich-text editors, with a headless runtime, composable plugins, and optional UI components. Setup paths cover Plate UI, Next.js, React, React Server Components, Node.js, and manual installation. Its plugin ecosystem includes AI menus, copilot, comments, suggestions, blocks, code, tables, media, mentions, import and export, and collaboration. The AI package provides streaming menus and chat, AI-marked text, and API-route integration patterns. Yjs collaboration supports IndexedDB, Hocuspocus, WebRTC, awareness, remote cursors, and custom providers. Media features support images, video, audio, and files, including embeds, uploads, drag-and-drop, clipboard paste, URL embedding, and captions. The package is MIT-licensed. The Free plan is free; Personal is €299, paid once and Teams is €799, paid once. The provided UploadThing middleware is intended for local development; production use requires application session and permission checks.
ProseMirror
ProseMirror is a toolkit for developers building rich-text editors on the web. It supports structured documents through a WYSIWYG-style interface while letting applications define document shape and content. Instead of treating a document as an HTML blob, it gives application code control over a custom data structure. Schemas and plugins provide ways to customize that structure and extend editor behavior. Four core modules handle the document model, editor state, view, and transformations; additional modules offer commands, key bindings, undo history, input macros, collaboration, and a basic schema. Multiple people can edit together in real time. Examples cover Markdown, image uploads, custom schemas, menus, code editors, footnotes, and track changes. ProseMirror is free, open source, and legally usable commercially; it can be self-hosted and is installed through npm. It works in recent Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge versions, as well as Internet Explorer 11. It is a modular toolkit rather than a ready-made editor component, and implementation generally involves a bundler.