Quarto
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 3 of 12 typesetting systems by recommenders
Recommended for turning Markdown and code into documents, websites, slides and books, but critics say it still has rough edges.
Recommended for turning Markdown and code into documents, websites, slides and books, but critics say it still has rough edges.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 27
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 84%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Renders many output formats from one source
“This is why Quarto (based on pandoc) is a better choice if you need both online and offline rendered documentation/text”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Plugins case study: mdBook preprocessors” “One nice thing about Quarto, is that I could have different fonts and formatting niceties for the epub vs PDF version”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “Writing a book with Quarto” “You write Markdown files with code blocks, and they're rendered into nice looking documents”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source” - Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “Writing a book with Quarto”
- Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Pandoc Templates”
- Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: SlideBySide – Present slides without sharing your screen”
Easy to use for analysis work
“It works well for this analysis style work.”
Comment from 19 May 2026 in “The last six months in LLMs in five minutes” “nowadays this is very easy with Quarto”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Python is not a great language for data science” “it's been quite easy to use so far”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “A website to destroy all websites” - Comment from 28 May 2026 in “A New Typst Template for Pandoc”
- Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: What's your preferred Python tool to convert Markdown to print ready PDF”
Runs Jupyter and other language code
“Python, R, Observable JS, Julia, bash, or any language with Jupyter kernel, all natively supported”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Pluto.jl 1.0 release – reactive notebook for Julia” “It supports both code execution via Jupyter, and output via Typst”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Pandoc Templates” “quarto is markdown-but-I-want-to-execute-code-blocks-inside”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers” - Comment from 27 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: MkSlides – Markdown to slides with a similar workflow to MkDocs”
Built on pandoc with strong extensions
“This is why Quarto (based on pandoc) is a better choice if you need both online and offline rendered documentation/text”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Plugins case study: mdBook preprocessors” “I don't see anything here that would make me move away from pandoc/quarto”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: I built a JSON-to-PDF book generator because formatting was killing me” “Uses pandoc under the hood, has support for latex and many more niceties.”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Write.md, a free, open-source, themeable Markdown editor for macOS” - Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: What Comes After Markdown?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Rough edges and occasional problems
“Quarto is better for documents, but still has rough edges.”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “Writing a book with Quarto” “I like quarto with ipynb myself (though it's not without occasionally infuriating problems).”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “Using an Engineering Notebook”
Other typesetting systems people recommend
The four most recommended other typesetting systems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 12 typesetting systems, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 43 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I write my presentation in Quarto and render them to reveal.”
“R was a lot of fun to play with data pipelines, visuals, Quarto”
“it still doesn't have a glossary function”
“I finished a BSc and an MSc with quarto and fossil.”
“Uses pandoc under the hood, has support for latex and many more niceties.”
“Python, R, Observable JS, Julia, bash, or any language with Jupyter kernel, all natively supported”
“It supports both code execution via Jupyter, and output via Typst”
“It sounds like it does what you want.”
“that template to correctly inherit the table format I wanted from pandoc”
“Quarto is my documentation tool.”
“Neat. Now I need Quarto, but with Elixir and Livebook!”
“this changed everything. Much nicer experience.”
“it wasn't usable for printed books (focused on papers)”
“Quarto also works great for this”
“I've been converting some of my course materials to it and have been enjoying it immensely.”
“It works well for this analysis style work.”
“quarto is markdown-but-I-want-to-execute-code-blocks-inside”
“I wish Markdown, or more specifically Quarto, would have existed at that time.”
“moved to quarto, it is excellent”
“Pandoc and quarto have excellent extensions to markdown”
“I like quarto with ipynb myself (though it's not without occasionally infuriating problems).”
“if the EU were to create a glorified R/Quarto”
“quarto is my goto for this”
“which is fantastic for building a website containing mathematics or coding”
“while Quarto does a decent job of plain text websites, it does the best job if it takes over the whole website”
“render the pages in Quarto”
“it's been quite easy to use so far”
“Quarto handles both beautifully, just look at their gallery”
“This is why Quarto (based on pandoc) is a better choice if you need both online and offline rendered documentation/text”
“I don't see anything here that would make me move away from pandoc/quarto”
“it lets you have Python code is slides too which is nice”
“nowadays this is very easy with Quarto”
“It has hardcoded block support for Note and Warning.”
“both of which fill the gaps this article claims”
“One nice thing about Quarto, is that I could have different fonts and formatting niceties for the epub vs PDF version”
“revealjs with quarto works out perfectly because in the same .qmd file I write the paper”
“Quarto is better for documents, but still has rough edges.”
“the people behind those tools do not seem to have the experience of working with structured lecture notes”
“You write Markdown files with code blocks, and they're rendered into nice looking documents”
“I've tried using Quarto's preview but it's so slow in comparison.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.