pasty vs paste
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted pastebins & snippets options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | pasty | paste |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 46 · Fair | 14 · At risk |
| Category | Pastebins & Snippets | Pastebins & Snippets |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Go | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 223 | ★ 574 |
| First released | 2020 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Pastebin.com | Pastebin.com, GitHub Gist |
What are pasty and paste?
pasty
pasty is a fast and lightweight code-pasting server written in Go. It supports configurable storage backends, paste expiration, and an autodelete feature for ephemeral snippet sharing.
- Fast snippet sharing
- Configurable storage backends
- Paste expiration
- Simple deployment
paste
paste is a minimalist, self-hosted pastebin service written in Go that stores text snippets and returns short URLs. It is designed to be tiny, dependency-free, and easy to run from a single binary.
- Single static binary
- Filesystem-based storage
- Short URL generation
- Simple HTTP API
pasty vs paste: key differences
Pasty is written in Go, while paste is built with JavaScript. Paste is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for pasty. Paste is the more established project (first released 2018), while pasty arrived in 2020. Paste has the considerably larger community, at 574 GitHub stars versus 223.
Why pick each one
Choose pasty if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in Go
Choose paste if…
- Extremely lightweight
- Trivial to deploy
Watch out for
- Very minimal feature set
- No syntax highlighting UI
Frequently asked questions
Is pasty or paste better?
Neither is universally better. paste has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are pasty and paste free and open-source?
Yes. pasty is licensed under MIT and paste under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run pasty and paste with Docker?
pasty: yes. paste: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, pasty or paste?
paste has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for pasty. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.