A fast, modern, real-time collaborative editor written in Go

Etherpad-Go is a performance-focused, 1:1 rewrite of Etherpad-Lite in Go. The original implementation was written in Node.js (CommonJS). Rewriting Etherpad in Go allows us to leverage Go’s concurrency model, static typing, fast startup times, and lower memory usage.

Etherpad is a real-time collaborative editor scalable to thousands of simultaneous users and supports full data export.

The easiest way to run Etherpad-Go:

1. Download the binary for your platform from the
   Releases page
2. Run it:

./etherpad-go

Etherpad-Go starts in under a second and uses an in-memory database by default, which is sufficient for many use cases.

Open your browser at:
http://localhost:9001

All configuration options are self-documented in the binary.

Show global options:

./etherpad-go --help

Show all configuration values:

./etherpad-go config show

Get a specific configuration value:

./etherpad-go config get <key>

For customization, copy:

settings.json.template → settings.json

and adjust it to your needs.

You can run Etherpad-Go using Docker.

Start Etherpad-Go with PostgreSQL:

docker compose up -d

Etherpad will be available at:
http://localhost:9001

The compose file can be found here:
docker-compose.yml

docker build -t etherpad-go .

Prebuilt images are available via GitHub Container Registry:

ghcr.io/ether/etherpad-go:<version>

• Go 1.25+
• Node.js 22+
• pnpm

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/ether/etherpad-go.git
   cd etherpad-go

2. Build etherpad-go:

   go run main.go prepare

3. Run the server. The server path is printed after a successful build:

   ./<your-built-binary>

Etherpad should start in less than a second.

You can migrate existing pads from Etherpad-Lite using the migration command:

migration 192.28.91.4:5432 \
  --type postgres \
  --username myOldEtherpadDBUser \
  --database myoldEtherpadDB

This connects to the old Etherpad-Lite database and migrates all pads to the Etherpad-Go database configured in settings.json or via environment variables.

Etherpad-Go supports plugins, but the plugin system is still evolving.

Supported plugins can be found in the plugins directory.

Enable plugins via settings.json:

{
  "plugins": {
    "ep_align": { "enabled": true }
  }
}

Or via environment variables:

ETHERPAD_PLUGINS_EP_ALIGN_ENABLED=true

Etherpad-Go is under active development. Feedback, issues, and contributions are welcome.