KL studio vs Overleaf vs Papeeria
An objective comparison. We publish exactly how each number was measured — the method, the machine, and the date — rather than asking you to take a marketing claim on faith. The pdflatex baseline is reproducible from public sources; KL studio's own compiler isn't open, so its figure is the speed the editor actually delivers — which you can feel for yourself by compiling a document in the app.
Just comparing the two established options? Overleaf vs Papeeria, head to head →
Feature comparison
| Feature | KL studio | Overleaf (free) | Papeeria (free) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (public alpha) | Freemium | Freemium |
| Incremental compile | Yes — recompiles only what changed | Full recompile | Full recompile |
| Real-time multiplayer | Yes, no per-project seat cap | Limited on free tier | Limited on free tier |
| Built-in knowledge base | Yes — papers, claims, typed graph | No | No |
| Import from arXiv / OpenAlex / Crossref | Yes, from the command palette | Partial | Partial |
Competitor tiers listed are the free tiers, as of 2026-06-25. Capabilities change; check each vendor's current plans for the authoritative details.
Compile speed on a real paper
On 5 real arXiv papers, edited in place (42-paper corpus, quick subset), editing a line and waiting for the preview takes about 0.6 s, where rebuilding the same paper from scratch takes 2.1–2.7 s — about 4x faster. Both halves of each pair are the same edit on the same document in the same run.
- median wall time for one edit-to-preview recompile, against a full rebuild of the same paper in the same run.
- Reported as a range: across repeats the recompile median was stable to 2% while the full-rebuild median moved 24% with filesystem cache state.
- Measured on single Linux workstation (archlinux), local, no network, 2026-08-17; harness
benches/corpus/resident_check.py.
Compile speed on a short document (engine)
KL studio's incremental engine recompiles only the parts you changed. On a rich synthetic paper — 120 sections with math, tables and citations, a warm edit-to-preview recompile takes about 35 ms (median warm incremental recompile (edit → preview), engine-only). For reference, a full pdflatex build of ResNet (arXiv:1512.03385), real source with its own figures + bibliography on the same machine takes 2338 ms cold and 759 ms on a warm recompile (12 pages).
Each bar fills in real time at its measured warm-recompile speed — KL studio finishes almost instantly while pdflatex keeps going, about 22× slower. Same document, same machine.
- Measured on single Linux workstation (archlinux), local, no network, 2026-06-25.
- Method:
benches/corpus/README.md(corpus listed inbenches/corpus/papers.tsv). - The
pdflatexbaseline is reproducible from public sources — the arXiv source plusbenches/corpus/run.sh. - KL studio's compiler isn't open-source, so its number isn't independently reproducible — it's the speed the editor delivers, which you can check by compiling a document in the app.
Why there's no “KL vs Overleaf seconds” number here (yet)
Perceived browser latency vs Overleaf and Papeeria (free tier) is a separate measurement from engine speed: it includes network, server queueing, and free-tier throttling. We publish those numbers with the exact date, tier, and method when collected, rather than guess them.