# TinyMCE alternatives after the licence change

*Source: https://www.editorstack.cc/alternatives/tinymce — last updated 2026-09-17. Licensed CC BY 4.0 with attribution to EditorStack.*

## Summary

- TinyMCE's npm licence field reads MIT for 6.x, GPL-2.0-or-later from 7.0.0 (March 2024), and from 8.3.0 points to a licence file offering GPL-2.0-or-later or Tiny's self-hosted commercial terms; self-hosted TinyMCE 8 is disabled without a valid licence key.
- For a closed-source product the realistic choices are to buy TinyMCE's commercial licence, move to another finished editor on a similar licence, or move to a permissively licensed editor and accept building more interface.
- Permissive replacements in our dataset: Quill (BSD-3-Clause, toolbar included, 58.7 kB gzip), Tiptap (MIT, headless, 123.3 kB), Lexical (MIT, headless, 104.9 kB) and BlockNote (MPL-2.0 core, block interface included, React-only, 386.1 kB).

## What actually changed

The npm registry records the licence each TinyMCE version was published under:

- **6.x:** MIT.
- **7.0.0, March 2024:** GPL-2.0-or-later, with a new `license_key` option so that developers make
  "a conscious decision" between the GPL and a commercial licence.
- **8.3.0, December 2025, onwards:** "SEE LICENSE IN license.md", offering GPL-2.0-or-later or the
  Tiny Self-Hosted License Agreement.

TinyMCE 8's documentation adds the operational part: in a self-hosted environment "a license key must
be provided and it must be valid. Otherwise, the editor will be disabled." GPL users set `'gpl'`;
commercial self-hosted use needs a commercial key. The full account is in our
[TinyMCE review](/libraries/tinymce).

For a GPL-compatible project, nothing much changed. For a closed-source SaaS product that adopted
TinyMCE under MIT, upgrading became a purchasing decision.

## Option 1: stay, and pay or comply

This is a legitimate answer and often the cheapest. TinyMCE's vendor-published Essential plan is $79
per month paid annually with 5,000 editor loads; your content, integration and user habits stay as
they are. Compare that line item with the engineering cost of any migration below before assuming
you must leave.

## Option 2: another finished editor

[CKEditor 5](/libraries/ckeditor) is the like-for-like replacement: toolbar on install, first-party
React, Vue and Angular integrations, HTML storage. It is lighter in our measurements — 161.2 kB gzip
against TinyMCE's 393.9 kB — but its licence is the same shape, GPL-2.0-or-later or commercial, and
its vendor-published Essential plan is $144 per month on annual billing.

Choose it for weight, localisation breadth or its collaboration and AI features, not to escape a
licence. [CKEditor 5 vs TinyMCE](/compare/ckeditor-vs-tinymce) has the detail.

## Option 3: a permissive editor with a toolbar

[Quill](/libraries/quill) is the permissively licensed editor in our dataset closest to TinyMCE's
shape: a fixed toolbar and themes on install, mounted on a DOM element in any stack. BSD-3-Clause,
58.7 kB gzip for the default build including both themes, eight lines in our benchmark application.

The costs are real. Every React, Vue and Angular wrapper is community-maintained, and the latest
quill release on npm is 2.0.3 from November 2024. For comment boxes, notes and simple article bodies
that is often acceptable; for a product's core editor it is a dependency risk to weigh deliberately.

## Option 4: a permissive framework, and build the interface

[Tiptap](/libraries/tiptap) (MIT, 123.3 kB gzip with StarterKit) and [Lexical](/libraries/lexical)
(MIT, 104.9 kB) remove the licence question entirely and hand you an engine with no toolbar. Tiptap has
first-party React and Vue bindings and sells collaboration and AI as services; Lexical has a
framework-agnostic core, a first-party React binding and no commercial tier.

The budget moves from licence fees to interface work: toolbar, link dialog, image upload, table
controls. Price that honestly: a TinyMCE-equivalent feature set is a project, not an afternoon.
[Tiptap vs CKEditor 5](/compare/tiptap-vs-ckeditor) frames the same build-or-buy question.

## Option 5: change the model to blocks

If TinyMCE was always a slightly awkward fit — users building documents from sections rather than
typing prose — the licence change is a reasonable moment to reconsider the content model.

[BlockNote](/libraries/blocknote) gives you a Notion-style block editor with its interface included,
an MPL-2.0 core usable in closed-source products, and React only; its AI and export packages are
GPL-3.0 or commercial. [Editor.js](/libraries/editorjs) is Apache-2.0, framework-agnostic and saves
JSON you render yourself.

## Side by side

| | Licence | Interface included | Bundle (min+gzip) | Frameworks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TinyMCE | GPL-2.0-or-later or commercial | Yes | 393.9 kB | React, Vue, Angular (first-party) |
| CKEditor 5 | GPL-2.0-or-later or commercial | Yes | 161.2 kB | React, Vue, Angular (first-party) |
| Quill | BSD-3-Clause | Yes | 58.7 kB | Any (community wrappers) |
| Tiptap | MIT | No | 123.3 kB | React, Vue (first-party) |
| Lexical | MIT | No | 104.9 kB | Any core; React (first-party) |
| BlockNote | MPL-2.0 core | Yes | 386.1 kB | React |
| Editor.js | Apache-2.0 | Block menus; tools installed separately | 64.3 kB | Any (community wrappers) |

Bundle figures are from our [bundle size benchmark](/research/bundle-size-benchmark-2026); the
configurations differ per library and are listed there.

## Migration notes

**TinyMCE to Quill, Tiptap, Lexical or CKEditor 5:** TinyMCE stores HTML, and all four import HTML.
The work is in elements the new schema does not know — plugin-specific markup, inline styles, custom
attributes — which are silently dropped unless you add formats, extensions or nodes for them. Audit a
sample of real stored content before estimating.

**TinyMCE to BlockNote or Editor.js:** a content conversion, not an import. Parse stored HTML into
blocks, decide what happens to inline formatting inside each block, and keep the original HTML until
the conversion has been verified.

**Custom TinyMCE plugins** are rewrites in every direction; no other editor shares its plugin API.

The whole category is on the [rich-text editor comparison](/categories/rich-text), with licence,
bundle size and framework support side by side.


## Frequently asked questions

### What is the closest free alternative to TinyMCE?

Quill, if 'closest' means an editor with a toolbar on install under a permissive licence: BSD-3-Clause, 58.7 kB gzip in our measurement. Its trade-offs are community-only framework wrappers and no npm release since November 2024.

### Is CKEditor 5 an escape from TinyMCE's licence?

No. CKEditor 5 is also GPL-2.0-or-later or commercial, and its GPL build displays a 'Powered by CKEditor' logo. It is an alternative on weight, price and features, not on licence.

### Can I stay on TinyMCE 6 under MIT?

The 6.x releases were published under MIT, and those licence terms do not change retroactively. Staying means forgoing every feature and fix released only in 7 and 8, so treat it as a bridge rather than a plan.

### Which alternative is easiest to migrate content to?

Any editor that imports HTML, because TinyMCE stores HTML: Quill, Tiptap, Lexical and CKEditor 5 all take the HTML route. Block editors such as BlockNote and Editor.js need a conversion step from HTML into blocks.