How it works
TipTap is built on ProseMirror, a well-tested editing engine, and wraps it in a friendlier API for React, Vue and plain JavaScript, with guides for other frameworks. It is headless: there is no built-in toolbar or styling, so the editor looks like the rest of your app. Each feature (headings, tables, mentions, slash commands, code blocks) is an extension you add or write, and documents are saved as structured JSON or as HTML.
Rich text editing is notoriously hard to build from scratch (selection, undo, pasting from Word, mobile keyboards), and that is the work TipTap takes on. Real-time collaboration, with several people editing one document and seeing each other's cursors, runs on Yjs: you can host the open-source Hocuspocus server yourself or pay for the Tiptap Platform, which adds comments, version history, document conversion and AI editing tools.
TipTap pros and cons
Pros
- Headless, so it matches your design instead of imposing one
- Many ready-made extensions, and custom ones are straightforward
- Stores clean JSON or HTML that is easy to render and search
- Real-time collaboration through Yjs, self-hosted or managed
Cons
- You build the toolbar and menus yourself
- Some advanced extensions and hosted features need a paid plan
- ProseMirror ideas (schemas, transactions) take time to learn
When to use TipTap
Pick it when
- Blog, notes, comment or CMS editors inside your own app
- Collaborative documents with live cursors
- Custom blocks such as mentions, embeds or callouts
Skip it when
- Users edit code or plain text (CodeMirror fits better)
- A plain text box with Markdown is enough
TipTap pricing
Open source
The editor is free (MIT). The hosted Tiptap Platform (collaboration, comments, AI) starts at about $49 a month, with a 30-day free trial.
TipTap pricing page (opens in a new tab)Approximate, checked September 2026.What the other tools cost
TipTap vs the alternatives
Related terms
More in Building blocks and outside APIs
Editors