Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Draft.js VS CKEditor

Compare Draft.js VS CKEditor and see what are their differences

Draft.js logo Draft.js

Rich Text Editor Framework for React

CKEditor logo CKEditor

Real-time collaborative future-ready rich text editor
  • Draft.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-29
  • CKEditor Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-08

CKEditor 5 is a modern WYSIWYG rich text editor that can easily accommodate the requirements of businesses and users in the age of digital transformation. It allows software creators and developers to build powerful writing solutions for applications of all sorts, within hours. Thanks to a fully customizable framework, ready-to-use builds, native integrations, extensive documentation, and reliable customer support, the editor can be fully tailored to your needs.

To provide users with all-around streamlined and collaborative writing experience, you can additionally include advanced features such as Track Changes and Comments, Revision History, and (if preferred) Real-time Collaboration! Easy Export to PDF and Word, responsive images, pagination, Markdown input and output support, and robust paste from Word and Google Docs are also popular choices.

Draft.js features and specs

  • Rich Text Editing
    Draft.js provides a powerful framework for building rich text editors with a high level of customization, allowing developers to implement various formatting and styling options with ease.
  • Immutable.js Integration
    Draft.js uses Immutable.js to manage editor state, which can lead to improved performance and easier state management, as it helps avoid unnecessary re-renders and mutations.
  • Extensibility
    The library offers the ability to create custom blocks, decorations, and plugins, enabling developers to extend and tailor the editor's behavior to their specific needs.
  • Facebook Support
    Draft.js is developed and maintained by Facebook, which suggests a certain level of reliability and indicates a strong backing in terms of updates and community support.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    The library is well-documented, with comprehensive guides and examples that help developers get started quickly and understand the full potential of the framework.

Possible disadvantages of Draft.js

  • Complexity
    Draft.js has a steep learning curve, especially for developers who are not familiar with React or Immutable.js, as it requires understanding its unique architecture and concepts.
  • Bundle Size
    The inclusion of Immutable.js can lead to a larger bundle size for web applications, which might be a concern for developers aiming for minimalistic and fast-loading applications.
  • Limited Built-in Features
    Draft.js provides a basic editor out of the box, which means developers often need to implement or find third-party plugins for advanced features like tables, embedded media, or collaborative editing.
  • Customizability Overhead
    While high customizability is a strength, it also means that basic implementations may involve more boilerplate code and setup compared to other, more out-of-the-box solutions.
  • Sparse Updates
    Draft.js does not receive updates as frequently as some other open-source projects, which can lead to uncertainty around the timeline for bug fixes or new feature implementations.

CKEditor features and specs

  • Real-time collaboration editing
    Premium
  • Comments
    Premium
  • Track changes
    Premium
  • Revision History
    Premium
  • CKBox File Manager
    Premium
  • Autoformatting
  • Autolink
  • Autosave
  • Basic text styles (Bold, Italic, Highlight, Underline, Strikethrough, Subscript, Superscript)
  • Code & Quote Blocks
  • Drag and drop
  • Export to PDF and Word
    Premium
  • Find and replace
  • Font styles
  • Image resize, style & alignment
  • Image responsiveness
  • Inserting images by pasting URL
  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Lists (bulleted, numbered, checklists)
  • Markdown support
  • Math and Chemical formulas
    Premium
  • Media embed
  • @Mentions
  • Pagination
    Premium
  • Paste from Word & G-Docs
  • Read-only support
  • Restricted editing
  • Spell and grammar checking
    Premium
  • Tables support with columns resizing, selecting rows and columns
  • Text layout
  • Word count
  • React integration
  • Vue JS integration
  • Angular integration

Draft.js videos

Live coding โ€“ย Draft.js copy-paste fix

CKEditor videos

CKEditor 5 - Collaboration features

More videos:

  • Demo - CKEditor 5 โ€“ย Revision History feature

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Draft.js and CKEditor)
Text Editors
25 25%
75% 75
Rich Text Editor
29 29%
71% 71
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
IDEs And Text Editors
26 26%
74% 74

User comments

Share your experience with using Draft.js and CKEditor. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Draft.js and CKEditor

Draft.js Reviews

We have no reviews of Draft.js yet.
Be the first one to post

CKEditor Reviews

14 Best Open Source WYSIWYG HTML Editors
CKEditor 5 is a feature-rich and open-source WYSIWYG editing solution with great flexibility. The user interface looks modern. Hence, you may expect a modern user experience.
Source: itsfoss.com
Looking for a CKEditor? Try these 10 Alternatives
CKEditor is a popular, versatile WYSIWYG text editor which allows you to write content directly on web pages or online applications. It can be used to create Word-like documents or provide a simple toolbar for email and instant message content. CKEditor provides rich text formatting options as well as spell check.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Draft.js should be more popular than CKEditor. It has been mentiond 27 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Draft.js mentions (27)

  • Introducing react-rte-light: A Lightweight Rich Text Editor for React
    Are you looking for a lightweight, flexible, and modern rich text editor for your React applications? Look no further! I'm excited to share react-rte-light, a TypeScript-based rich text editor built with Draft.js. Itโ€™s designed to work seamlessly with React 16.8 to 19, offering a minimal-dependency alternative to heavier editors like React Quill. Whether you're building a blog platform, a note-taking app, or a... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Lexical 0.24 with Vanilla JS: Getting started
    Lexical is an open source project and considered the successor of Draft.js. It is primarily developed by Meta, licensed under MIT. It is not restricted to React, but supports Vanilla JS, too. The flexibility enables us to integrate it with other JS libraries such as Svelte and Vue. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Ask HN: Is there a licensable/free version of the "Substack" email editor?
    - https://draftjs.org/ If you're talking about liking the full experience with settings and previews, that I'm afraid is all custom built. I can't imagine an open source reusable one being out there, but I could be wrong! - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Which Rich Text Editor to use ?
    I've always used Quill and always satisfied with it. It can be adapted to React Native as well. Despite the most popular RTE is Draft js it has some limitations on mobile. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Inline styles in draft-js
    To be able to create an editor, the only requirement is to know how to set up a ReactJS (or NextJs) project. We're going to use draft-js and contenido packages in this tutorial. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

CKEditor mentions (11)

  • Show HN: I'm building an app to replace Overleaf and Notion
    The actual "word processor" or editor of notion is hot garbage, especially for software/keyboard people. Try out something like https://ckeditor.com/ and it is infinitely better. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Storybook Starter Guide: Learn Design System Principles
    For example, at CKEditor, we use a hybrid approach โ€” Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets (Sass) preprocessor and CSS variables:. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Your rich text could be a cross-site scripting vulnerability
    Another sign that your application might vulnerable to SXSS is simply whether or not you are using a rich text editor, such as TinyMCE or CKEditor. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Rails Frontend Bundling - Which one should I choose?
    Problematic dependencies. Some dependencies like CKEditor are designed specifically to work with Webpacker and won't work with other tools. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Best Text Editor to integrate with React?
    At my work, we recently released a beta of our switch CKEditor, coming from Draftjs. Works pretty well. They have a free license available, not sure if that would cover your use-case tho. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Draft.js and CKEditor, you can also consider the following products

Quill - Powerful, API-driven rich text editor

TinyMCE - TinyMCE is a content editor that functions as a plug-in for Wordpress websites.

MediumEditor - MediumEditor is a simple inline editor toolbar built with JavaScript.

Summernote - Summernote is a JavaScript library that helps users create WYSIWYG editors online.

ProseMirror - A toolkit for building rich-text editors on the web

Trix - A rich text editor for everyday writing.