Compare
RichTextEditor vs TinyMCE, CKEditor, Froala, Tiptap.
Perpetual license versus per-load subscriptions. AI built in versus AI add-on. Self-hosted versus Enterprise-tier-only. See the full 3-year total cost of ownership plus a side-by-side feature matrix — pulled from the vendors' own pricing pages in April 2026.
3-year TCO, single domain
Perpetual beats subscription at every tier.
RichTextEditor 2.0
$129
One-time perpetual. AI included. Self-hosted.
TinyMCE Essential + AI
$7,628
$79/mo Essential + $133/mo AI add-on (100M credits), 3 yrs.
CKEditor 5 + AI Assistant
$11,520
$160/mo Essential + $160/mo AI add-on, 3 yrs.
Froala (perpetual)
~$881
Basic one-developer perpetual. Lighter AI story, no JSON model.
Cheapest 3-yr TCO — ~60× lower than TinyMCE + AI add-on at Essential tier.
Widest framework reach — only editor that natively ships Blazor Server + ASP.NET Web Forms + Classic ASP bindings.
BYOK AI at entry tier — TinyMCE / CKE gate BYOK behind add-ons or proxies; we ship editor.aiToolkit.setResolver() at $129.
Figures pulled from each vendor's pricing page in April 2026. Subscription editors assume the Essential / equivalent starter tier with the AI add-on enabled. Perpetual editors are one-time purchase.
| Perpetual |
— |
included |
Yes — day one |
| Subscription, per load |
$79 |
$133 (100M creds) |
Enterprise only |
| Subscription, per load |
$160 |
$160 |
Custom tier |
| Perpetual |
— |
OpenAI-only add-on |
Yes |
| Subscription, per doc |
$49 |
varies |
Enterprise only |
| BSD |
free |
none (DIY) |
Yes |
| MIT |
free |
none (DIY) |
Yes |
* TCO assumes one domain, starter tier, AI add-on enabled for the full 36 months. Enterprise / custom quotes excluded. Prices from vendor pricing pages, April 2026.
| Ask AI toolbar dropdown | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | limited | ✓ |
| Docked AI Chat panel | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | × | ✓ |
| AI Review / Suggestion drawer | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (Track Changes add-on) | × | ✓ |
| BYOK resolver at entry tier | proxy only | ✓ adapter | × | ✓ |
| JSON document model | ✓ getJSON()/setJSON() | × | ✓ | × | ✓ |
| Markdown round-trip | ✓ fromMarkdown()/toMarkdown() | partial | ✓ | × | plugin |
Editable RTE_DefaultConfig at runtime | ✓ | × | × | × | × |
| Blazor Server binding | ✓ native | ✓ | × | generic .NET | × |
| ASP.NET Web Forms binding | × | × | × | × |
| Classic ASP binding | × | × | × | × |
| PHP package | ✓ | × | × | ✓ | × |
| Self-hosted at entry tier | ✓ | Enterprise only | Custom tier | ✓ | Enterprise only |
| No per-load metering | ✓ | × | × | ✓ | per doc |
- • TinyMCE Essential + AI add-on runs ~$7.6K over 3 years for one domain. We're $129 once.
- • TinyMCE gates self-hosting to the Enterprise tier. We self-host at $129.
- • TinyMCE AI requires running a proxy server for your provider API key. We expose
setResolver(fn) on the client and IRichTextBoxAiResolver for ASP.NET Core — no proxy needed.
- • TinyMCE has no native Web Forms or Classic ASP binding. We do.
- • CKE Essential + AI Assistant is ~$11.5K over 3 years. We're $129 perpetual for one domain.
- • CKE's Track Changes, Comments, and Revision History are separate premium add-ons. Our AI Review drawer ships with the base editor.
- • CKE supports React / Vue / Angular only. We add native Blazor, Web Forms, PHP, Classic ASP.
- • Self-hosted is Custom-tier with CKE. Day-one with us.
- • Froala Basic perpetual is ~$881. We start at $129 — nearly 7× cheaper.
- • Froala's AI is a lighter OpenAI-only add-on. Our AI Toolkit is provider-agnostic BYOK with Ask AI / AI Chat / AI Review out of the box.
- • Froala is HTML-string-first. We ship a real semantic JSON model, Markdown round-trip, and static HTML render via
RichTextEditorStructuredContent.
- • Tiptap is headless — you build every toolbar, dialog, and dropdown. We ship a polished, ready-to-deploy UI you can restyle.
- • Tiptap Cloud bills per stored document ($49-$999/mo). We're a single perpetual purchase.
- • Tiptap's Collaboration and AI bundles push you toward their Cloud unless you reach Enterprise. Our AI is self-hosted via your own backend at entry tier.
- • Quill is BSD OSS and free, but has no AI, no Track Changes, no Comments, no real-time collab, no image-upload server, no commercial support.
- • Framework bindings (react-quill, VueQuill, ngx-quill) are community-maintained — no vendor SLA.
- • If your team is already doing OT/CRDT pipelines on top of Delta, Quill fits. For everyone else, the $129 we charge buys a finished product and direct support.
- • Lexical is MIT OSS and powerful, but you assemble the toolbar, dialogs, plugins, upload server, and AI yourself.
- • Only React is first-party. Vue / Svelte / Solid bindings are community.
- • No official AI product; Meta's WASM demo is showcase code, not shippable feature.
- • We're what you get when you don't want to build an editor framework from scratch.
One-time purchase. A paid license is perpetual and never expires. The price includes one year of software updates; after that you can keep using the version you have forever, or renew at 25% off to get new updates.
Most teams move over in a day or two. The HTML output is clean and compatible; event and command patterns map directly. If you use the Tag Helper on ASP.NET Core or the React / Vue / Angular wrappers, a simple import swap and attribute rename covers most pages. Our support team will walk through migration with you.
Any provider — the AI Toolkit is provider-agnostic. On the client, call editor.aiToolkit.setResolver(fn) and your function talks to whatever backend you hold the API key in. On ASP.NET Core, register an IRichTextBoxAiResolver implementation with dependency injection. Ship with OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, local LLMs — it's your resolver.
Our AI Review drawer provides a reviewable suggestions queue with accept / reject / ledger persistence — similar scope to Track Changes for AI edits. Multi-user real-time collaboration is on the roadmap; for Google-Docs-style concurrent editing today, pair the editor with Yjs or look at CKEditor's real-time collab (separate paid add-on).
Self-hosted by default. The editor is static JavaScript + CSS — no callouts to our servers. Your content, your backend. The optional AI Review drawer only calls the endpoints you wire in.
Yes. Download the free evaluation and try every feature on your own project, no account or credit card required. Ready to deploy? Convert to a perpetual license in one step.
Download the trial, run it on your project, and see in 20 minutes whether RichTextEditor fits. If it does, $129 gets you a perpetual one-domain license with the AI Toolkit included.