TexLite
A self-hosted, real-time collaborative browser-based LaTeX editor — an open-source alternative to Overleaf.
🔗 Visit TexLite
Description
Overleaf made collaborative LaTeX writing mainstream, but it's a hosted service — your documents live on someone else's servers, and the free tier has real limits. TexLite is a self-hosted alternative aimed at small, trusted teams: a browser-based LaTeX editor with real-time collaborative editing (built on Yjs), syntax highlighting and autocompletion for LaTeX and BibTeX via CodeMirror, and even Vim mode for people who want their keybindings everywhere.
It compiles documents through latexmk with a choice of engines, supports project organization with folders and tags, ZIP import/export, inline comments anchored to specific text, a citation library, SyncTeX navigation between source and rendered PDF, and per-project history with optional Git/GitHub backup. It's installable as an npm package and licensed under AGPL-3.0.
💬 Our review
The short version: if you or your organization would rather run LaTeX collaboration on your own infrastructure than trust a hosted service with your documents, TexLite gives you most of what made Overleaf popular, minus the hosting.
Overleaf remains the default comparison and has a much larger user base, template gallery, and journal-submission integrations that a self-hosted tool won't match out of the box. TexLite's honest trade is control and privacy (your documents never leave your server) in exchange for doing your own hosting, updates, and backups — AGPL-3.0 also means anything you build on top of it that you distribute needs to stay open source, which matters if you were hoping to build a commercial product around it. A solid pick for a research group or small team that already self-hosts other tools; overkill if you just need to write one paper.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
Licence AGPL-3.0, auto-hébergé, aucun coût de licence.
Pros
Édition collaborative temps réel (Yjs) auto-hébergée
Coloration syntaxique LaTeX/BibTeX, mode Vim, navigation SyncTeX
Gestion de projet complète (dossiers, tags, export ZIP, sauvegarde Git)
Les documents ne quittent jamais votre propre serveur
Cons
Licence AGPL-3.0 contraignante pour un usage commercial dérivé
Pas de galerie de modèles ni d'intégration soumission de revues comme Overleaf
Auto-hébergement = charge de configuration et de maintenance