shouldiuse.io

VERDICT

Should I use Quarto?

An open-source scientific and technical publishing system - quarto.org

Worth it. Buy if your team produces code-driven reports, docs, papers, or dashboards and lives in Markdown and a terminal. Skip it if you want point-and-click simplicity or private, hosted sharing without extra tooling.

Confidence

Medium. Based on 20+ public sources; search noise from the Quarto board game and Quarto Group publisher was filtered out.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support qualityNo support evidence in sources
  • Security posture

Pricing

$0

Quarto CLI

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierYes
Quarto Pub$0
Posit ConnectContact for pricing

Best for

  • Data science teams publishing recurring reports
  • Academics formatting journal articles
  • Technical docs and book authors
  • R, Python, and Jupyter users

Not for

  • Non-technical writers wanting Google Docs simplicity
  • Teams needing point-and-click dashboards without code
  • Anyone sharing simple notes — use plain Markdown or Notion
  • Orgs needing built-in private hosting with authentication

Gotchas - check before you buy

high

Quarto Pub hosting is free but public; no auth for private docs

medium

Free tool, but enterprise hosting (Posit Connect) is a separate paid product

medium

Very large multi-file projects hit rendering-scale issues

medium

Embedded dependencies (pandoc, esbuild) have had CVEs; update promptly

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Completely free and open source
  • Publishes to HTML, PDF, Word, websites, journals, and dashboards
  • Works with R, Python, and Jupyter notebooks
  • Free publishing service via Quarto Pub
  • Approved in U.S. VA government technology catalog

Cons

  • Documented friction: a 14-common-problems page exists
  • Rendering scales poorly on very large projects
  • No built-in user authentication for published content
  • Migration from R Markdown or LaTeX requires rework
  • Some technical users report strong frustration

Sources & method

Analyzed 9/27/2026 - 10 sources - Open-source project with a security page; findings are dependency-level CVEs, addressed on GitHub.

official x5review x3security x2
  • Embedded pandoc 3.1.1 flagged as insecure, GitHub issue raised on the embedded pandoc version in Quarto CLI.
  • PolyFill CDN supply chain attack (CVE-2024-38526), Posit published a support advisory covering the PolyFill CDN supply chain attack.
  • esbuild bump for CVE-2024-24789, Quarto CLI issue tracking an esbuild upgrade to handle CVE-2024-24789.

Key stats

  • Value for money: 5/5

    Rating

  • $0

    Starting price

  • 10

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 5/5. Free and open source, no seat limits
  • Ease of use: 3/5. Documented common problems, mixed user sentiment
  • Feature depth: 5/5. Reports, sites, journals, dashboards, books, slides
  • Support quality. No support evidence in sources
  • Security posture: 3/5. Public security page; dependency CVEs patched
  • $0 Starting price Open-source publishing engine
  • Yes Free tier Quarto Pub free public hosting
  • Open source License Developed by Posit; successor to R Markdown
  • VA TRM Government listing Listed in U.S. VA technology reference model

Pricing

Quarto CLI

$0

  • Open-source publishing engine
  • PDF, HTML, Word, slides, sites, dashboards

Quarto Pub

$0

  • Free publishing service
  • Public content only

Posit Connect

Contact for pricing

  • Enterprise platform for publishing Quarto content
  • Adds private, managed hosting

Security

Open-source project with a security page; findings are dependency-level CVEs, addressed on GitHub.

  • Embedded pandoc 3.1.1 flagged as insecureGitHub issue raised on the embedded pandoc version in Quarto CLI.
  • PolyFill CDN supply chain attack (CVE-2024-38526)Posit published a support advisory covering the PolyFill CDN supply chain attack.
  • esbuild bump for CVE-2024-24789Quarto CLI issue tracking an esbuild upgrade to handle CVE-2024-24789.

What users say

Redditors largely treat Quarto as R Markdown's successor with strong publishing reach, though some technical users report real workflow frustration.

“Quarto is the successor”
Reddit, r/RStudio
“I absolutely hate hate ha”
Reddit, r/bioinformatics

Alternatives

Compare Quarto with each alternative.

  • Google Docs / plain Markdown

    For simple shared docs, skip the build pipeline entirely

Companies that use it

  • U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs⁴
  • NHS R Community
  • UC Santa Barbara Library (Carpentries teaching)
Full analysis

Based on 20+ public sources; search noise from the Quarto board game and Quarto Group publisher was filtered out.

Free, open-source publishing for code-driven reports and docs. Powerful but terminal-based; wrong fit for non-technical writers.

Methodology

Based on 20+ public sources; search noise from the Quarto board game and Quarto Group publisher was filtered out.

Sources

  1. Quarto — official sitequarto.org
    official
  2. Quarto product security pagequarto.org
    security
  3. quarto-dev/quarto on GitHubgithub.com
    official
  4. VA OIT TRM listing for Quartooit.va.gov
    official
  5. Is Quarto replacing RMarkdown, Jupyter Notebooks... — Reddit r/datasciencereddit.com
    review
  6. 14 Common Problems with Quartoqmd4sci.njtierney.com
    review
  7. Will Quarto scale with many files? — GitHub discussiongithub.com
    review
  8. User Authentication for Quarto — GitHub discussiongithub.com
    security
  9. Quarto at Work — Posit blogposit.co
    official
  10. Quarto Pub — free publishing docsquarto.org
    official

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