CKEditor 5 review: a finished editor with a GPL-or-commercial licence

What CKEditor 5 is, and who it is for

CKEditor 5 is the editor you install when the requirement is "a rich-text editor" and nobody on the team wants to design one. It arrives with a toolbar, a document model, a data pipeline that turns that model into HTML and back, and a plugin catalogue large enough that most document features are a configuration change rather than a project.

That puts it on the opposite side of the rich-text category from Tiptap and Lexical, which hand you an engine and expect you to build every visible control. The closer comparison is TinyMCE: two long-established, finished editors with first-party integrations for React, Vue and Angular, and two licences that stopped being permissive. CKEditor 5 vs TinyMCE sets them side by side.

It fits content management systems, internal knowledge tools, LMS authoring screens and any product whose users expect a word-processor toolbar. It fits poorly anywhere the licence is a problem, and that is the first thing to establish.

Licensing is the first decision

The npm package declares its licence as "SEE LICENSE IN LICENSE.md", and that file offers two options: GPL-2.0-or-later, or commercial terms from CKSource.

In practice the choice appears in your configuration. Every editor must be given a licenseKey. Self-hosted GPL use sets it to 'GPL', and the vendor's documentation is explicit that CKEditor 5 without premium features "will then display a small 'Powered by CKEditor' logo". The GPL key works only with the self-hosted npm or ZIP distribution; the cloud CDN always needs a commercial key.

So there are three realistic positions. A GPL-compatible product self-hosts for free and shows the logo. A closed-source product buys a commercial licence. A product that needs collaboration, AI assistance or the email export features buys a plan that unlocks them, whatever its own licence.

Getting started

This is the file from our benchmark application, unedited: nine lines to a working classic editor with a heading dropdown and bold and italic buttons.

import { ClassicEditor, Essentials, Paragraph, Heading, Bold, Italic } from 'ckeditor5';
import 'ckeditor5/ckeditor5.css';

ClassicEditor.create({
  attachTo: document.getElementById('app'),
  licenseKey: 'GPL',
  plugins: [Essentials, Paragraph, Heading, Bold, Italic],
  toolbar: ['undo', 'redo', '|', 'heading', 'bold', 'italic'],
  root: { initialData: '<h2>Hello editor</h2><p>Type here.</p>' },
});

Two details from building it. The plugin list is explicit: the toolbar only offers what you imported, so a missing feature is usually a missing plugin rather than a bug. And the create call accepts a single configuration object with attachTo, which is how the current documentation and typings present it.

We have not published a time-to-editor figure for CKEditor 5 yet. The application ran, but on a different machine from the published time to first editor benchmark, and timings from two machines are not comparable. It joins that table on the next full re-run.

Strengths

A finished editor. Toolbar, dropdowns, keyboard handling and HTML output work on install. For a team whose product is not the editor, that is weeks saved.

First-party integrations for React, Vue and Angular. @ckeditor/ckeditor5-react, @ckeditor/ckeditor5-vue and @ckeditor/ckeditor5-angular are all published by the vendor.

A plugin architecture that reaches deep. The framework documentation walks through building custom block widgets with their own model and view, so product-specific content is supported rather than hacked in.

Localisation. The vendor documents 41 fully translated UI languages and right-to-left support out of the box.

Collaboration from the same vendor. Real-time collaboration is a premium feature, but it is a maintained product rather than a community experiment.

Limitations

The licence decides for you. GPL-2.0-or-later is incompatible with most closed-source SaaS distribution models, and the alternative is a commercial contract priced around editor loads. Teams used to MIT-licensed editors such as Tiptap should budget before prototyping.

The GPL build carries vendor branding. The 'Powered by CKEditor' logo is part of the free self-hosted configuration, which matters for white-label products.

Premium features are where the value concentrates. Collaboration, CKEditor AI, the email configuration helper and export with inline styles are all unlocked by paid plans.

Heavier than the headless frameworks. 161.2 kB gzip for a four-plugin editor, against 123.3 kB for Tiptap with StarterKit and 104.9 kB for Lexical. A realistic configuration with tables, images and lists is larger again.

Client-side only. The Next.js guide says it cannot be pre-rendered with SSR or SSG. That is normal for editors, but it rules out server-rendering the editing surface.

Stored content is HTML. That is exactly what many products want. It is the wrong fit if you need block-structured JSON; see Editor.js for that model.

Pricing

Vendor-published on the day we checked. A cloud-hosted Free plan with 1,000 editor loads per month under a commercial licence. Essential at $160 per month, or $144 per month on the annual toggle, with 5,000 loads and $45 per additional 1,000. Professional at $319, or $289 annually, with 20,000 loads. Custom plans by quote. CKEditor AI and Collaboration are add-ons with their own prices, and self-hosted commercial use is arranged with sales after a 14-day trial.

The GPL route costs nothing in licence fees and everything in licence obligations. For the choice between a finished editor and a framework you assemble, see Tiptap vs CKEditor 5, and for the full category, the rich-text editor comparison.