Snippet Box 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 | Snippet Box | paste |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 17 · At risk | 14 · At risk |
| Category | Pastebins & Snippets | Pastebins & Snippets |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,092 | ★ 574 |
| First released | 2021 | 2018 |
| Replaces | GitHub Gist, Pastebin.com | Pastebin.com, GitHub Gist |
What are Snippet Box and paste?
Snippet Box
Snippet Box is a self-hosted application for organizing and searching your personal collection of code snippets. It offers syntax highlighting, tagging, and a clean interface for reusing saved code.
- Snippet organization
- Syntax highlighting
- Tag-based search
- SQLite storage
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
Snippet Box vs paste: key differences
Snippet Box is written in TypeScript, while paste is built with JavaScript. Paste is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for Snippet Box. Paste is the more established project (first released 2018), while Snippet Box arrived in 2021.
Why pick each one
Choose Snippet Box if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.1k GitHub stars)
Choose paste if…
- Extremely lightweight
- Trivial to deploy
Watch out for
- Very minimal feature set
- No syntax highlighting UI
Frequently asked questions
Is Snippet Box or paste better?
Neither is universally better. Snippet Box has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Snippet Box and paste free and open-source?
Yes. Snippet Box is licensed under MIT and paste under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Snippet Box and paste with Docker?
Snippet Box: yes. paste: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Snippet Box or paste?
paste has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for Snippet Box. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.