Tiptap - Developer toolkit for building collaborative apps.
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Tiptap: The Developer Toolkit Transforming Collaborative Apps

In an age where collaboration happens online more than anywhere else, developers are under pressure to build applications that not only handle text but also allow for seamless, real-time teamwork. Tools like Google Docs and Notion have set the standard for collaborative writing, yet recreating their functionality from scratch is a monumental task. That’s where Tiptap, founded in 2022 in Berlin, comes into play.

Tiptap is a suite of open-source content editing and real-time collaboration tools, designed specifically for developers who need to embed advanced document functionality into their own applications. Unlike traditional editors that treat documents as endless scrolls, Tiptap brings structure, flexibility, and developer-friendly customization into the mix. This makes it an indispensable toolkit for teams across industries like legal, fintech, education, government, and beyond.

Already used by high-profile organizations such as LinkedIn, GitLab, Axios, and Anthropic, Tiptap has quickly proven that it’s not just a useful framework—it’s becoming the backbone of how modern apps handle content and collaboration.

Who are the founders behind Tiptap?

The strength of Tiptap lies not just in its product but also in the diverse expertise of its founding team. Six co-founders brought this vision to life, each specializing in a different area of product development and company leadership.

  • Philip Isik, Co-Founder and Co-CEO
    Philip leads strategy, sales, and business development. He initially created Tiptap as an open-source project while running his digital consultancy. His passion for intuitive and transformative user experiences has guided Tiptap’s growth from side project to global platform.
  • Sven Adlung, Co-Founder and Lead Frontend Developer
    With over two decades of experience, Sven focuses on the Tiptap Editor and its cloud services. His frontend expertise ensures the product is not only powerful but also developer-friendly.
  • Patrick Baber, Co-Founder and DevOps
    Patrick drives IT infrastructure and software architecture. With a background in business economics and a decade of experience in tech, he ensures Tiptap runs smoothly and securely at scale.
  • Nick Hirche, Co-Founder and Lead UX/UI Designer
    Nick brings the design vision to Tiptap, making complex problems understandable and elegant through user experience. His ability to balance aesthetics with usability has shaped Tiptap’s unique product identity.
  • Timo Isik, Co-Founder and Lead Backend Developer
    Specializing in backend systems, Timo focuses on collaboration and cloud services. His experience ensures Tiptap’s real-time features are scalable and reliable.
  • Sebastian Schrama, Co-Founder and Co-CEO
    With a decade in finance and operations, Sebastian steers the company’s business health and operational strategy. His leadership complements Philip’s vision, balancing growth with long-term sustainability.

Together, this team of six balances technical excellence with business savvy, enabling Tiptap to move quickly while delivering reliable solutions to its users.

What problem is Tiptap solving for developers?

At its core, Tiptap addresses a problem most developers face: building collaborative apps is hard.

Most text editors are built for personal note-taking, structured as one long, infinite scroll. While this works for jotting down quick thoughts, it fails in professional use cases where structure matters—legal contracts, government RFPs, exam sheets, or policies that must adhere to formatting standards. Developers attempting to retrofit these use cases often find themselves hacking together solutions that are brittle, inefficient, and hard to maintain.

Tiptap flips this model by offering a robust, customizable editor that integrates seamlessly with developer workflows. It doesn’t just support collaboration—it enables real-time, structured, and scalable collaboration.

How does Tiptap Pages change the game?

One of the company’s most exciting product launches is Tiptap Pages, a feature designed to bring true page awareness into digital editing. Unlike infinite scroll editors, Tiptap Pages replicates the structured feel of traditional documents while staying flexible for the modern web.

Here’s what makes Tiptap Pages special:

  • Visual page layouts: Developers can select A4, Letter, Legal, or custom dimensions that mirror the real-world documents they need to replicate.
  • Smart pagination: Content flows intelligently across pages, maintaining logical breaks and avoiding the awkward gaps common in hacked-together editors.
  • Dynamic headers and footers: Pages support page numbers, section titles, metadata, and custom elements, making documents easier to navigate.
  • Custom node support: Developers can build specialized content blocks like callouts, exhibits, or embedded media, enabling apps to meet industry-specific needs.
  • Developer-first design: Pages isn’t just a tool; it’s a framework. Teams can extend functionality, style documents, and deeply integrate it into their existing systems.

With Tiptap Pages, creating an editor that rivals or even surpasses Word in terms of structured formatting is no longer a daunting engineering project—it’s a feature developers can plug in and customize.

Why was Tiptap Pages necessary?

The company’s motivation for building Pages was rooted in user demand. Teams across industries were already stretching Tiptap to handle scenarios where structure mattered—contracts, proposals, exams—but were forced to simulate page breaks through clumsy workarounds.

By introducing Pages, Tiptap offered a native solution for an already pressing need. This is particularly important in industries like:

  • Legal and Government: Where strict page counts and signature placements matter.
  • Fintech and Insurtech: Where documentation must be precise and audit-friendly.
  • Education: Where exams and academic papers require formal formatting.
  • Enterprise workflows: Where PDFs are the end product and must look identical to the authored document.

Instead of forcing Word documents into modern workflows, Tiptap empowers companies to build structured documents directly within their apps, bridging the gap between traditional formatting and collaborative technology.

Who is already using Tiptap and why?

Tiptap has achieved remarkable traction for a company founded just a few years ago. Its client base includes some of the world’s most influential organizations:

  • LinkedIn integrates Tiptap into internal and external collaboration tools.
  • GitLab leverages it for developer-focused documentation.
  • Axios uses Tiptap for content production workflows.
  • Anthropic, one of the leading AI companies, relies on it for internal collaboration.

This widespread adoption underscores the versatility of Tiptap. It works equally well for media companies, software development platforms, and AI organizations—any industry where collaboration and structured content matter.

How does Tiptap fit into the open-source ecosystem?

One of Tiptap’s defining traits is its commitment to open source. Developers worldwide can access the framework, experiment, and contribute to its evolution. This fosters a community-driven ecosystem where improvements happen faster and reflect real-world developer needs.

At the same time, Tiptap offers premium plans like Team and Growth, which unlock advanced features such as Tiptap Pages, collaboration services, and dedicated support. This hybrid model allows Tiptap to remain accessible while sustaining growth as a venture-backed company.

What is Tiptap’s vision for the future?

Looking ahead, Tiptap aims to cement itself as the default toolkit for collaborative app development. As more industries move away from legacy tools like Microsoft Word and toward embedded, cloud-native solutions, the demand for flexible frameworks like Tiptap will only increase.

The team envisions expanding cloud services, refining real-time collaboration, and introducing more specialized features for verticals that rely on document-intensive workflows. With its strong technical foundation and growing community, Tiptap is positioned not just to compete with existing tools but to redefine how documents are built and shared in the digital era.

Why should developers and businesses pay attention to Tiptap?

For developers, Tiptap removes one of the biggest headaches in app development: building a modern, collaborative editor from scratch. Its open-source foundation makes it adaptable, while its premium features provide enterprise-grade solutions.

For businesses, adopting Tiptap means faster product development, better collaboration experiences, and workflows that mirror the expectations set by giants like Google Docs—without the overhead of reinventing the wheel.

In short, Tiptap is more than just a text editor framework. It’s a platform for building the future of collaboration, one that balances open-source accessibility with enterprise-level power.

Final Thoughts

Tiptap’s journey from a side project to a widely adopted developer toolkit is a story of vision, community, and innovation. By identifying a gap in how collaborative apps are built, its founders created a product that resonates across industries. With powerful features like Tiptap Pages and a commitment to open source, Tiptap is setting the stage for the next generation of collaborative tools—tools that don’t just imitate Word or Google Docs but surpass them in flexibility, integration, and design.

For anyone building applications where collaboration and structured content matter, Tiptap isn’t just an option—it’s quickly becoming the gold standard.