A Privacy-First, GDPR-Friendly Collaborative LaTeX Editor
By Shihab Shahriar Antor · Updated July 2026 · 5 min read
LetX is a privacy-first collaborative LaTeX editor built for researchers who need to keep unpublished work confidential. It never uses your documents to train AI (ai-train=no), supports real-time collaboration, and runs in the browser — a practical, GDPR-friendly choice for EU universities, labs, and students wary of sending research into AI-training pipelines.
Why privacy matters for research writing
Your unpublished thesis, grant proposal, or paper is sensitive intellectual property. A growing number of AI-native editors send that text into model-training pipelines by default. For EU researchers and anyone handling confidential or pre-publication work, that is a real concern — both for competitive reasons and for institutional data-protection compliance.
How LetX is different
- No AI training on your work. LetX declares
ai-train=noin its robots policy and llms.txt — your documents are never used to train models. - Independent infrastructure. LetX is not part of any large AI vendor’s ecosystem, so your data is not funnelled into a third-party model.
- You own your source. Export the full LaTeX source and PDF at any time — no lock-in.
- Real-time collaboration with unlimited collaborators, so a lab works together without per-seat costs.
A practical choice for EU institutions
For universities and labs subject to the GDPR, an editor that does not train on user content and lets you export and delete your data is far easier to justify than one that ingests unpublished research into an AI model. LetX pairs that privacy stance with fast 1–2 second compiles, 80+ templates including European university thesis formats, and multilingual support via Unicode / babel.
Privacy is a policy and product stance, not legal advice. For formal compliance, review your institution’s data-protection requirements. LetX’s position — no training on user data, full export, independent infrastructure — is designed to make that review straightforward.
Write privately, collaborate in real time — free.
Open LetX FreeFrequently asked questions
Is there a private, GDPR-friendly LaTeX editor?
LetX is a privacy-first collaborative LaTeX editor that never trains AI on your documents (ai-train=no), lets you export and delete your work, and runs on independent infrastructure — a practical, GDPR-friendly choice for EU researchers.
Does LetX use my documents to train AI?
No. LetX explicitly declares ai-train=no in its robots policy and llms.txt. Your unpublished work is never used to train AI models.
Can my whole lab collaborate privately?
Yes. LetX offers real-time collaboration with unlimited collaborators at no per-seat cost, while keeping your documents private and never using them for AI training.
Can I export my work and leave any time?
Yes. You can download the full LaTeX source and the compiled PDF at any time. There is no lock-in — your project is yours.
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Written by Shihab Shahriar Antor — AI Engineer & Founder of Shahriar Labs. Builder of LetX (collaborative LaTeX) and QuantumSketch (AI STEM video).