Eddyter vs Tiptap (2026): Which Rich Text Editor Should You Choose?

Summary — Eddyter vs Tiptap in 2026

Both Eddyter and Tiptap are modern AI-capable rich text editors built on solid foundations. The choice between them comes down to one question: how much do you want to build yourself?

• Choose Tiptap if you have an experienced frontend team, want full control over every UI element, and are building an editor-centric product (think Notion clones or AI writing tools where the editor IS the product).
• Choose Eddyter if you want a fully built editor — UI, AI, storage, infrastructure — that you can drop into your app in 10 minutes and ship the same week.

Tiptap is a framework. Eddyter is a finished product. That's the entire comparison in one sentence. The rest of this guide breaks down what that distinction actually costs you in time, money, and engineering hours.

What is Tiptap?

Tiptap is a headless rich text editor framework built on top of ProseMirror. It launched in 2019 and has grown into one of the most popular open-source editor frameworks for React and Vue developers. The core editor is MIT-licensed and free; advanced features like real-time collaboration, AI Toolkit, and document conversion are paid Tiptap Cloud add-ons.

Tiptap is intentionally unopinionated. You install the core, register the extensions you need, and then write your own React or Vue components for every UI element — toolbar buttons, link modals, image upload dialogs, mention dropdowns, slash commands. The editor itself doesn't ship with a UI. That's the design philosophy: maximum flexibility, minimum opinion.

What Tiptap does well:

• Modern, ProseMirror-based architecture
• Open-source MIT core with strong community (~32K GitHub stars)
• Tree-shakable extension system keeps bundles lean
• Strong real-time collaboration support via Yjs
• Excellent for highly custom editor experiences
• New AI Toolkit (2026) for agentic AI document editing

What Tiptap doesn't do:

• Ship with a UI — you build everything yourself
• Provide hosting or storage infrastructure
• Include AI features in the free tier
• Solve accessibility for you (left to the implementer)
• Give you a working editor in under an hour

What is Eddyter?

Eddyter is a plug-and-play AI rich text editor built on Meta's Lexical framework — the modern editor foundation Meta and many newer projects have moved to. Unlike Tiptap, Eddyter ships with the editor UI, AI features, storage, file handling, and infrastructure all included. You install the package, pass an API key, and get a fully working editor.

Eddyter is built for the developer who wants a finished editor in their product, not a kit to assemble. The trade-off is intentional: less customization at the framework level, far less time and money spent before you ship.

What Eddyter does well:

• 10-minute integration (we mean it — watch the video)
• Built-in AI: text generation, image creation, voice transcription, tone adjustment
• Storage and file infrastructure included (no separate S3/CDN setup)
• Run-time configuration: toggle features without code changes or redeploys
• Modern Lexical foundation, fast initial load (~200ms total, ~5ms server init)
• Predictable flat-fee pricing starting at $12/month

What Eddyter doesn't do:

• Give you ProseMirror-level low-level control
• Run on Vue, Angular, or vanilla JS (currently React/Next.js focused)
• Open-source the entire editor (it's a managed product, not a framework)
• Replace Tiptap for editor-as-the-product use cases

Quick Comparison Table

Architecture: Lexical vs ProseMirror

Tiptap is built on ProseMirror — a mature, battle-tested editor toolkit by Marijn Haverbeke. ProseMirror is incredibly powerful but has a steep learning curve. Tiptap's main contribution is making ProseMirror approachable through a friendly extension API.

Eddyter is built on Lexical — Meta's newer editor framework, originally created for Facebook and now used in many of Meta's properties. Lexical is designed for performance, accessibility, and a cleaner API surface than ProseMirror. It's what many developers in 2026 reach for when starting a new editor project.

Both are excellent foundations. The practical difference: ProseMirror has been around longer with a larger ecosystem, while Lexical has cleaner architecture and better performance characteristics for modern React apps. Eddyter inherits Lexical's benefits without exposing you to the underlying complexity — you don't need to know what Lexical is to use Eddyter.

AI Capabilities

Both editors offer AI in 2026, but the developer experience is dramatically different.

Tiptap AI Toolkit (released late 2025/2026) is a powerful framework for building AI agents that interact with the document tree. It supports streaming, structured edits, and complex agent workflows. To use it, you need to:

1. Subscribe to a Tiptap Cloud plan that includes AI
2. Bring your own API keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, or other LLM providers
3. Build the UI for AI interactions (chat, prompts, suggestion review)
4. Configure prompt behavior, model selection, and content guardrails
5. Handle metering, error states, and quota management

Eddyter AI is included in Pro and AI Pro plans with no separate setup. You get:

• AI Chat ("Ask Anything") with full document context
• Quick Actions: rewrite, summarize, expand, change tone
• Image generation directly in the editor
• Voice-to-text transcription
• Sentence correction (grammar, clarity, flow)
• BYOK option ($39/month) if you want to use your own LLM keys
• Managed option ($59/month) with 1,000 AI credits included

Both approaches are valid. Tiptap gives you control. Eddyter gives you working AI today.

Pricing — Real Numbers

This is where the trade-off becomes most concrete.

Tiptap pricing (2026):

• Open-source editor: Free (MIT)
• Tiptap Cloud Start: 30-day free trial, then paid
• Team / Business / Enterprise plans: Custom pricing based on documents stored, AI usage, and feature bundles
• AI Toolkit, Collaboration, Conversion: Additional metered or bundled costs
• Self-hosted on-prem: Enterprise tier only

The real-world cost of running a Tiptap-based editor with collaboration and AI in production typically lands in the $300–$1,500/month range, depending on document volume and AI usage. You also need engineering time to build and maintain the UI layer.

Eddyter pricing (2026):

Flat-fee, predictable, and transparent. See full pricing.

For most SaaS products in the 0–10K MAU range, Eddyter's AI Pro Managed plan at $59/month replaces what would be a $400–$1,000+/month Tiptap Cloud + AI provider + infrastructure bill — plus weeks of engineering time you'd otherwise spend wiring it all together.

Setup & Integration Time

Real numbers from teams using each product in production:

Tiptap:

• Hello-world editor: 2–4 hours
• Basic toolbar with formatting buttons: +1 day
• Image upload with backend storage: +2–3 days
• AI integration with custom UI: +1 week
• Real-time collaboration setup: +1–2 weeks
• Total to production-ready editor: 2–6 weeks

Eddyter:

• Hello-world editor: ~10 minutes
• Customize toolbar via settings panel: 5 minutes
• AI features: included, zero additional work
• File upload & storage: included, zero additional work
• Total to production-ready editor: under 1 day

This isn't a marketing claim — it's the entire reason Eddyter exists. We watched too many teams spend 4–6 weeks building what should be one week of work, then maintain it forever after.

Code Comparison

Here's what each integration actually looks like for a Next.js app.

Tiptap (basic, you still need to build the UI)

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"use client"
import { useEditor, EditorContent } from '@tiptap/react'
import StarterKit from '@tiptap/starter-kit'
export default function Editor() {
  const editor = useEditor({
    extensions: [StarterKit],
    content: '<p>Start writing...</p>',
  })
  // You still need to build:
  // - Toolbar component with all formatting buttons
  // - Link insertion modal
  // - Image upload UI + backend storage
  // - Mention dropdown menu
  // - AI chat panel
  // - Save/load logic with your database
  // - Authentication flow
  return <EditorContent editor={editor} />
}

Eddyter (full editor with AI, storage, and UI included)

jsx

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"use client"
import { ConfigurableEditorWithAuth, EditorProvider } from 'eddyter'
import 'eddyter/style.css'
export default function Editor() {
  const apiKey = "YOUR_API_KEY"
  const handleContentChange = (html) => {
    console.log(html)
  }
  return (
    <EditorProvider>
      <ConfigurableEditorWithAuth
        apiKey={apiKey}
        onChange={handleContentChange}
      />
    </EditorProvider>
  )
}

That's the full integration. Toolbar, formatting, AI chat, image upload, file storage, tables with merge/resize, drag-and-drop, slash commands, theming — all included.

Get your API key at eddyter.com/user/license-key and follow the setup docs.

When to Choose Tiptap

Pick Tiptap if:

• The editor is the core of your product (Notion clone, AI writing tool, technical doc platform)
• You have dedicated frontend engineers comfortable with ProseMirror concepts
• You need extreme customization at every level (schema, commands, UI)
• You're building Vue, Svelte, or vanilla JS apps
• You're willing to invest 2–6 weeks in initial build plus ongoing maintenance
• You need very specific collaboration patterns Yjs handles uniquely well

When to Choose Eddyter

Pick Eddyter if:

• The editor is a feature in your product, not the entire product
• You want to ship this sprint, not next quarter
• Predictable, flat-fee pricing matters to your business model
• You want AI built in without building it yourself
• You're on React or Next.js
• Your team is small and engineering hours are precious
• You want run-time configuration so non-developers can adjust the editor

Real-World Decision Framework

Here's a practical way to decide.

Build a Tiptap editor if:

• Your product is editor-first
• You have 4+ frontend engineers
• Your investors are funding 6-month roadmap items
• Customization beats time-to-market

Drop in Eddyter if:

• Your product needs an editor as one of many features
• Your team is small (1–10 engineers)
• You're shipping an MVP, an internal tool, or a SaaS feature
• Time-to-market beats customization

Most teams we talk to actually need Eddyter and don't realize it. They start evaluating Tiptap because it's the popular open-source choice, then four weeks in they're still building the toolbar.

Try Eddyter Free

If you're on the fence, the fastest way to know is to try it. The free tier requires no credit card.

• Get your free API key
• Read the integration docs
• Watch: What is Eddyter? (2 min)
• Watch: Integrate Eddyter in 10 minutes
• See full pricing

Tiptap is excellent for what it does. So is Eddyter. The question isn't which is better — it's which is right for the product you're actually building.