Quarto
Open-source publishing system that turns Markdown and notebooks into papers, sites, slides and books.
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About Quarto
Quarto is a command-line publishing system for scientific and technical writing, built on Pandoc and developed by Posit, the company behind RStudio. You write in Markdown or a Jupyter notebook, embed Python, R, Julia or Observable JS code, and Quarto runs the code and renders the result as an article, website, blog, book, dashboard or slide deck. One source can produce HTML, PDF, Word and ePub, with citations, cross-references, equations and figure layouts handled for you. It is the successor to R Markdown and can render most existing .Rmd files unchanged, so R users can move over gradually. Editor support comes through extensions for VS Code and Positron and built-in integration in RStudio, including a visual editor. It suits researchers, data scientists and educators who want reproducible documents rather than copy-pasted charts. Quarto is free and open source; output can be hosted anywhere, with optional publishing to Posit's paid products.
Best for: Researchers and data scientists publishing reproducible papers, reports and sites from code.
Pros and cons
What works
- One source renders to HTML, PDF, Word, ePub, slides and websites
- Runs Python, R, Julia and Observable code inside documents
- Renders most existing R Markdown files without changes
- Free and MIT-licensed
Why people leave
- Command-line and Markdown based; no WYSIWYG app of its own
- PDF output needs a LaTeX or Typst setup
- Real-time co-editing is not built in, unlike Overleaf
Top Quarto alternatives
See all 5- 1
Jupyter Book66.5Python-community option built on MyST, aimed at books and course sites made from notebooks.
- 2
Typst59.6Fast modern typesetting language with a collaborative web editor, for PDF papers without LaTeX.
- 3
Overleaf52.2Online LaTeX editor with real-time co-authoring, better when co-writers don't write code.
- 4
GitBook50.0Hosted docs platform with a visual editor, for technical docs that don't need executable code.
- 5
TeXstudio48.9Desktop LaTeX editor for people who prefer writing LaTeX directly with live PDF preview.
Why people left Quarto
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Quarto: common questions
Is Quarto free?
Yes. Quarto is free, open-source software.
Is Quarto open source?
Yes. The source code is on GitHub at quarto-dev/quarto-cli.
What platforms does Quarto run on?
Quarto is available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
What are the best alternatives to Quarto?
The highest-ranked Quarto alternatives right now are Jupyter Book, Typst and Overleaf. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.