Embeddable editors

Embeddable code editors, block-style editors, rich text (WYSIWYG) editors and canvas editors you can use in web apps.

Code editors

Embeddable code editors with syntax highlighting, often used in docs, playgrounds, or admin tools.

• Monaco Editor — The same editor that powers VS Code. Full-featured, heavy.
• CodeMirror — Versatile code editor for the web. Modular and widely used.
• ACE Editor — High-performance code editor. Mature and customizable.
• CodeFlask.js — Lightweight code editor for simple embeds.
• CodeJar — Minimal, dependency-free code editor (~1 KB).

Block editors

Block-based editors (blocks like paragraph, heading, list, image). Good for structured content and modern CMS UIs.

• Editor.js — Block-styled editor with clean JSON output. Free and open source.
• MediumEditor — Inline editor with a simple toolbar. No blocks, minimal setup.

Rich text (WYSIWYG) editors

What-you-see-is-what-you-get editors for formatted text and HTML.

• TinyMCE — Trusted WYSIWYG editor. Free tier and commercial options.
• Quill — Powerful rich text editor with a modular API.
• Slate — Framework for building custom rich text editors (React).
• Draft.js — Rich text editor framework for React by Meta.
• CKEditor 5 — Modern WYSIWYG editing (open source and commercial).
• Froala — Commercial WYSIWYG editor with many features.
• Summernote — Simple WYSIWYG editor built on Bootstrap.

Markdown editors

Editors for Markdown with preview, often used in comment forms or docs.

• EasyMDE — Simple, embeddable Markdown editor (maintained fork of SimpleMDE).
• SimpleMDE — Original embeddable Markdown editor; consider EasyMDE for updates.
• Editor (lepture) — Markdown editor with live preview (demo).

Canvas editors

Infinite-canvas editors for whiteboards, diagrams and spatial interfaces.

• Excalidraw — whiteboard with a deliberately hand-drawn look, usable as the free hosted app or embedded in a React app via the @excalidraw/excalidraw package (npm install react react-dom @excalidraw/excalidraw). Real-time collaboration is end-to-end encrypted, drawings autosave locally to the browser, and it installs as a PWA for offline use; exports to PNG, SVG, the clipboard and the .excalidraw JSON format, with reusable shape libraries and read-only share links. A single MIT licence covers both the app and the npm package; Excalidraw+ is a separate paid hosted tier.

• tldraw — React SDK for infinite canvas apps, built around an Editor class over a reactive record store with signals; custom shapes and tools, multiplayer sync, persistence, cross-tab sync, undo/redo and image export to SVG and PNG. Installs as the tldraw npm package, scaffolded with npm create tldraw. The free collaborative whiteboard at tldraw.com is the same SDK in product form.

  Note the licensing: tldraw is source-available under its own license, not open source. Development environments are free, but production use requires a license key — free for non-commercial hobby projects, paid otherwise — and the SDK ships technical enforcement that validates the key, detects the deployment environment, controls watermark display and may transmit usage data back to tldraw.