CKEditor vs TinyMCE
How do TinyMCE and CKEditor compare, and which rich text editor is right for you?
Why TinyMCE is the Best CKEditor Alternative
TinyMCE WYSIWYG
Rich Text Editor
TinyMCE is a feature-rich, customizable rich text editor available through either a free and permissive MIT open source license or a paid commercial license.
TinyMCE is built and maintained by Tiny Technologies — a team of 80+ people with over two decades of rich text editor building experience.
CKEditor (4 & 5)
CKEditor is a rich text editor available through either a free, somewhat restrictive open source license, or paid/free commercial licenses.
It is built and maintained by CKSource – a team of 50+ people focused on building content management tools.
CKEditor vs TinyMCE rich text editor
Over the past two decades, both CKEditor and TinyMCE have pioneered rich text editing. They jointly deserve credit for shaping the industry into what it is today.
Both editors are considered enterprise-grade, are available under an open source license and have stellar engineering teams that stand behind their products.
So what’s the difference between CKEditor and TinyMCE?
Two things often come up: licensing and upgrades.
LICENSING
CKEditor and TinyMCE both offer open source licenses. However:
CKEditor 5 is available under a copyleft GPL license, which requires you to share your source code with the community (not ideal for proprietary software).
CKEditor also offers a free commercial license, which does not require you to release your code to the public, but there are some restrictions. You can only use the free commercial license for an app that has a maximum of five active users and two developers working on it. So, if you have more than five customers or a team of more than two developers, you must pay to use CKEditor.
TinyMCE’s free open source MIT license has no limits on usage, users or developers, and no requirement to publicly share your source code. The MIT license is known as the "gold standard" among the open source community for its flexibility.
UPGRADES
This is another area where the two rich text editors differ.
With the release of CKEditor 5, the community reported difficulties moving from Version 4 to 5. In fact, CKSource openly states it isn’t a simple upgrade, but a full migration.
As a developer-first company, TinyMCE puts careful thought into the developer experience and effort involved in upgrading between versions. For the move from Version 4 to 5, a simple 4-step plan was released to ensure the upgrade process was as smooth as possible.
Devs can count on TinyMCE upgrades to have minimal disruption – not just when upgrading to a newer version, but also when switching plans (for example, from open source to premium).
License and Support
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 & 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Open source license | MIT - not required to share source code | GPL - must share source code |
| Community support |  | |
| Professional support (paid plans) | | |
| Phone support available (paid plans) | |  |
Looking for a specific TinyMCE comparison?
Pros and Cons TinyMCE vs CKEditor 4 & 5
The CKEditor vs TinyMCE comparison is updated twice-annually
(January and July)
The Basics
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
Cost  | Premium features from $960 per year | Premium features from $960 per year | Premium features from $960 per year |
| Open Source License | MIT | GPL, LGPL or MPL | GPL |
| Commercial License | | | |
| Self-hosted Deployment | | | |
| Cloud Deployment | | | |
| Users | Unlimited | From 5 Users | From 5 Users |
| Developers | Unlimited | From 2 Developers | From 2 Developers |
Customization and Integration
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| API | | | |
| Framework Integrations | Angular, AngularJS, Blazor, Bootstrap, Django, jQuery, Laravel, Node.js + Express, Rails, React, Svelte, Swing, Vue, Web Components | Angular, jQuery, React, Vue, Webpack | Angular, jQuery, React, Vue |
| Customizable UI | | | |
| Skins and Icon Packs | | | |
| Language Translations | 37 | 39 | 9 |
Check out a detailed comparison of Vue rich text editors
Check out a detailed comparison of React integrations
Docs & Support
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extensive documentation | | | |
| Community Support | | | |
| Professional Support | | | |
| Support SLAs | | | |
| Number of support tickets per month | 2+ | 2+ | 2+ |
| Dedicated Account Manager | | | |
| Phone Support Available |  | | |
Core Editing Features
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Formatting | | | |
| Ordered / Unordered Lists | | | |
| Tables | | | |
| Image Insert | | | |
| Emoticons / Emoji Picker | | | |
| Templates | | | |
Advanced Editing Features
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code Editor | | | |
| Image Editing | | | |
| Enhanced Media Embed | | | |
| File Management | | | |
| Content Filtering | | | |
| Format Painter | | | |
| Permanent Pen | | | |
| Case Change | | | |
| Checklists | | | |
| Export PDF | | | |
| Markdown | | | |
Check out a detailed comparison of format painter features
Clean Copy and Paste
Functionality that processes and cleans up pasted content from apps, ensuring compliant and easy-to-edit HTML
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| MS Word | |  | |
| MS Excel | | | |
| Google Docs | | | |
Note: Faded check marks indicate partial functionality
Check out a detailed comparison of clean copy and paste features
Compliance
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customizable Spell Checker | | | |
| Accessibility Checker | | | |
| Broken Link Checker | | | |
Check out a detailed comparison of spell checking features
Check out a detailed comparison of accessibility features
Collaboration
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real-time Collaboration | Refer to TinyMCE Real-time Collaboration (RTC) documentation for a full list of functionality available in RTC | | |
| Mentions | | | |
| Comments | | | |
Check out a detailed comparison of comments features
Check out a detailed comparison of @mentions features
Security
| TinyMCE | CKEditor 4 | CKEditor 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asymmetric JWT Signing | | | |
| Real-time Collaboration End-to-end Encryption | | | |
See a mistake? Let us know.
All data in the table above (and supporting pages) was pulled from projects’ public websites on December 6, 2021.
Features listed vary by plan (open-source, free or paid). If information on a specific feature or topic cannot be found on the editor’s website, it is not included. Only features released by the editor author are listed.
Migrating from CKEditor 4 or 5 to TinyMCE?
It’s easy to migrate from CKEditor to TinyMCE, with minimal disruption:
Easy integration with 12 + frameworks and hundreds of other tools
The TinyMCE code is totally customizable and works with the framework of your choice
Help when and where you need it
Enterprise-Grade Support
Responsive, in-house support to help you implement, customize and troubleshoot.
Community
Thousands of questions and answers updated daily on StackOverflow and Github.
Documentation
Tutorials, quickstarts, code samples and videos to help you deploy faster.
Trusted by the hottest startups and biggest brands
“TinyMCE satisfied our needs at a competitive cost, and we were able to integrate it without restructuring our product.”
Chris Burd | Vice President of policyIQ
“TinyMCE should be at the top of any list if you’re looking for a visual text editor. It’s flexible, integrates well with different systems and is extremely stable.”
Rob Wells | Vice President of policyIQ
“We’re very satisfied with TinyMCE’s features, functionality, ease of integration, and the impeccable support team.”
Paul Alexandrescu | Technical Director
Chris Burd | Vice President, policyIQ
Rob Wells | CEO
Paul Alexandrescu | Technical Director
Some Tiny stats
350M+
downloads every single year
100M+
products powered by TinyMCE
35M+
hits on our CDN per day
23,000+
commits on GitHub
1.5M
developers worldwide use TinyMCE
400+
APIs