LaTeX and Typst: what they are and when to use each

The same four-line note became a PDF in 0.08 seconds with Typst and in 1.60 seconds with LuaLaTeX in the run recorded on this page, and both PDFs say the same thing. LaTeX and Typst are both ways of writing a document as plain text with markup and letting a program set the pages; they differ in how many programs take part, how quickly they answer, and where each one is required.

Below you will follow one note through each system, read the lines a build prints about its engine and its release, walk through the releases this track runs on, compare four engines on the same file, and choose a tool for five documents and then for one of your own.

A LaTeX file passes through an engine, a format and a distribution

Here is the note, written once for each system. The LaTeX file needs a class and a document environment around its text; the Typst file is the text, with one setting at the top:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\section{Hello}
This note was typeset by \LaTeX. The area of a circle is $\pi r^2$.
\end{document}

#set heading(numbering: "1")

= Hello
This note was typeset by Typst. The area of a circle is $pi r^2$.

Every session in this track is recorded the same way: each command after $ , then everything it printed, and [exit status N] under any command that failed. This one builds both files, reads each PDF back as text with pdftotext and asks Typst for its version:

from session import files, run

# The same note in LaTeX and in Typst, each compiled once and its PDF read back as text.
files("hello/hello.tex", "hello/hello.typ")
run("""
pdflatex hello.tex
typst compile hello.typ hello-typst.pdf
pdftotext hello.pdf -
pdftotext hello-typst.pdf -
typst --version
""")

$ pdflatex hello.tex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.29 (TeX Live 2026) (preloaded format=pdflatex)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./hello.tex
LaTeX2e <2026-06-01>
L3 programming layer <2026-09-09>
(…/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2025/01/22 v1.4n Standard LaTeX document class
(…/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo)) (…/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3kernel/l3backend-pdftex.def)
No file hello.aux.
[1{…/texmf-var/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./hello.aux) )<…/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm/cmbx12.pfb><…/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm/cmmi10.pfb><…/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm/cmr10.pfb><…/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm/cmr7.pfb>
Output written on hello.pdf (1 page, 40776 bytes).
Transcript written on hello.log.
$ typst compile hello.typ hello-typst.pdf
$ pdftotext hello.pdf -
1

Hello

This note was typeset by LATEX. The area of a circle is πr2 .

1

$ pdftotext hello-typst.pdf -
1 Hello
This note was typeset by Typst. The area of a circle is 𝜋𝑟2 .

$ typst --version
typst 0.15.1 (9dfd3a08)

Read the LaTeX build from its first line. This is pdfTeX names the engineTeX engine: The typesetting program that reads a TeX or LaTeX file and writes the pages, such as pdfTeX, XeTeX or LuaTeX. Commands such as pdflatex, xelatex and lualatex start one of them with the LaTeX format., the typesetting program that the pdflatex command started, and TeX Live 2026 names the collection it came from. TeX itself is Donald Knuth’s program from the late 1970s; pdfTeX, XeTeX and LuaTeX are its present-day engines, started by pdflatex, xelatex and lualatex. The line LaTeX2e <2026-06-01> names the formatformat: A precompiled set of macro definitions that a TeX engine loads before it reads your file. LaTeX is a format, which is why a LaTeX log names the engine first and the LaTeX release after it. the engine loaded before it read your file: LaTeX is a set of macros, created by Leslie Lamport in 1984, that turns commands such as \section into spacing and numbering. The line that starts (…/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls shows the engine reading the document classdocument class: The file named in \documentclass, such as article or report, that sets a LaTeX document's overall layout and provides commands such as \section. from the installed tree, where every packagepackage: A file of extra LaTeX commands, usually ending in .sty, that a document loads with \usepackage. CTAN collects packages, and a TeX distribution installs them. a document loads also lives.

That tree comes from a TeX distributionTeX distribution: A collection that installs the TeX engines, the LaTeX format, packages, fonts and tools together and keeps them updated, such as TeX Live, MiKTeX or TinyTeX.. TeX Live, from the TeX Users Group, is the comprehensive one, for Unix, macOS and Windows. MiKTeX starts small and downloads what a document asks for while it builds. TinyTeX is a small subset of TeX Live that grows as you add packages. The packages themselves are collected on CTAN, which lists more than 7,000 of them.

Typst is one program with its own markup and scripting

The Typst half of the session is short: typst compile printed nothing at all, because a build that succeeds has nothing to report. The Typst project describes it as a markup-based typesetting system designed to be as powerful as LaTeX and easier to learn, published under the Apache 2.0 licence. Its guide for LaTeX users says that no boilerplate is needed to start a document, and that the compiler is a single small binary that any user can run.

Three things do the work of LaTeX’s layers. Markup covers the common cases: = Hello is a heading and $pi r^2$ is maths. A #set rule changes a default for the rest of the file, as #set heading(numbering: "1") does in hello.typ so that the heading is numbered like LaTeX’s. And a scripting language, reached with #, handles everything else. Packages and templates come from Typst UniverseTypst Universe: The online index of Typst packages and templates. Typst downloads a package from it the first time a document imports it and keeps it in a local cache., and Typst fetches each one only when a file imports it, keeping a copy for later builds. Its package index lists about 1,700 packages, about half of them templates, against CTAN’s 7,000 and more, a difference of age and size you will meet whenever a task needs a special package.

The two PDFs read back differently in one place. LaTeX’s maths came out as πr2, plain letters, while Typst’s came out as 𝜋𝑟2, Unicode’s mathematical italic letters. Both look the same on the page; text extraction and copy-paste see what each system wrote. Step through both builds, top half and bottom half:

LaTeX needed an engine, a format and a tree of installed files, and left helper files behind; Typst needed one program and left one PDF.

Both systems keep releasing, and the version line says which you have

LaTeX names each release by its date, so the line LaTeX2e <2026-06-01> in a log tells you exactly which LaTeX ran. The LaTeX Project releases twice a year, usually in June and November, and describes each release in an issue of LaTeX News. TeX Live is released once a year and receives package updates in between. Typst numbers its releases: typst --version printed typst 0.15.1 (9dfd3a08) at the end of this lesson’s first session. Walk through how the two systems got here:

Versions matter when a file leaves your computer. arXiv compiles the TeX source of every submission itself, with TeX Live 2025 by default and TeX Live 2023 on request, so a document that relies on something added in 2026 can fail there although it built on your laptop. Overleaf, too, sets a TeX Live year for each project. The version line is how you find out which one ran.

The same note in four engines: time, size, fonts and tags

How fast a system answers decides how often you look at the result while writing. This program builds the note three times with each of the three LaTeX engines and with Typst, and reads every PDF with poppler’s pdffonts and pdfinfo:

"""The note of hello/ built by three LaTeX engines and by Typst: the median time of three builds, the size of the
PDF, the fonts it embeds and whether it is tagged (pdffonts and pdfinfo from poppler 26.09.0 read the PDFs)."""

import statistics
import time

from session import files, shell

files("hello/hello.tex", "hello/hello.typ")
BUILDS = [
    ("pdfLaTeX", "pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error hello.tex"),
    ("LuaLaTeX", "lualatex -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error hello.tex"),
    ("XeLaTeX", "xelatex -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error hello.tex"),
    ("Typst", "typst compile hello.typ hello.pdf"),
]

print("Each build ran three times; the time is the median of the three.")
print()
print(f"{'engine':<10}{'seconds':>8}  {'PDF bytes':>9}  {'fonts embedded':<16}{'tagged'}")
for name, command in BUILDS:
    times = []
    for _ in range(3):
        start = time.perf_counter()
        status, output = shell(command)
        times.append(time.perf_counter() - start)
        if status != 0:
            raise SystemExit(f"{name} failed:\n{output}")
    _, fonts = shell("pdffonts hello.pdf")
    rows = fonts.splitlines()[2:]
    embedded = sum(1 for row in rows if row.split()[-5] == "yes")
    _, info = shell("pdfinfo hello.pdf")
    fields = dict(line.split(":", 1) for line in info.splitlines() if ":" in line)
    size = int(fields["File size"].split()[0])
    tagged = fields["Tagged"].strip()
    print(f"{name:<10}{statistics.median(times):>8.2f}  {size:>9,}  {f'{embedded} of {len(rows)}':<16}{tagged}")

Each build ran three times; the time is the median of the three.

engine     seconds  PDF bytes  fonts embedded  tagged
pdfLaTeX      0.45     40,776  4 of 4          no
LuaLaTeX      1.60     24,061  5 of 5          no
XeLaTeX       0.52      9,240  5 of 5          no
Typst         0.08     11,935  3 of 3          yes

In this run Typst finished in 0.08 s, pdfLaTeX in 0.45 s, XeLaTeX in 0.52 s and LuaLaTeX in 1.60 s, twenty times as long as Typst. Typst’s guide says compilation usually takes milliseconds, not seconds, and the gap grows with the document, because a long LaTeX document also needs extra runs, the subject of the third lesson. The other columns do not change between runs. Every engine embedded all its fonts, so the PDFs look the same on any computer, and only Typst’s PDF is a tagged PDFtagged PDF: A PDF that also stores its structure, such as headings, paragraphs and reading order, so screen readers and text extraction can follow it. Typst writes tagged PDF by default., which screen readers rely on; LaTeX can tag too, when the document asks for it.

Choose by the document and the people who work on it

Most choices come down to four questions: does anyone require LaTeX source, will co-authors edit in Word, does the document number and cross-reference things, and will it live in version control? arXiv insists on TeX source when it exists and says that a PDF made from TeX will typically be rejected. Journals and conferences publish their own LaTeX classes on CTAN, such as IEEEtran, acmart, llncs and elsarticle. Word marks every change by every author with tracked changes and inserts citations in a style you pick from a menu, but a .docx file is a ZIP package of XML parts, which Git cannot compare line by line. The CommonMark specification of Markdown defines no equations, citations or numbered references at all.

Here are five invented documents and a choice for each:

Now answer the questions for a document of your own; each answer rules tools out or adds a caveat, with the reason:

In short: LaTeX where a venue demands it, Typst where you choose freely and want speed and tagged PDF by default, a word processor where co-authors live in tracked changes, and Markdown for notes that need no numbering. This track teaches LaTeX and Typst side by side, so each later lesson shows both.

Practise: choose the tool, read the build

The questions mix the layers of a LaTeX build, the parts of Typst, the version lines and the choice of a tool for a document. The idea you know least comes first, and every answer explains itself:

Interview questions

Warm-up (fresher to 2–5 years): how do TeX, LaTeX and a distribution such as TeX Live differ?

TeX is the typesetting program Donald Knuth wrote, and its present-day engines are pdfTeX, XeTeX and LuaTeX. LaTeX is a format: a set of macros, created by Leslie Lamport, that the engine loads before your file, so that you write \section and \cite instead of spacing commands. A distribution such as TeX Live, MiKTeX or TinyTeX installs the engines, the LaTeX format, thousands of packages and fonts together and keeps them updated. So pdflatex note.tex means the pdfTeX engine running the LaTeX format on your file, with every class and package read from the distribution’s tree. A log shows all three: This is pdfTeX for the engine, TeX Live 2026 for the distribution and LaTeX2e with its release date for the format.

Two harder questions follow, about choosing a toolchain under a deadline and about moving a group to Typst. Make your own first decision before you open each first step:

Key takeaways

• A LaTeX build is an engine (pdfTeX, XeTeX or LuaTeX) running the LaTeX format, with classes, packages and fonts read from a distribution such as TeX Live, MiKTeX or TinyTeX.
• Typst is one program with markup, set rules and a scripting language, and it downloads a package from Typst Universe only when a document imports one.
• The version lines say what ran: LaTeX names its twice-yearly releases by date, TeX Live by year and Typst by number, and arXiv’s default is still TeX Live 2025.
• On the same note, Typst built fastest and alone wrote a tagged PDF, while every engine embedded all its fonts.
• Choose LaTeX when a venue requires its source, Typst when you choose freely, a word processor for co-authors who work in tracked changes, and Markdown for notes that number nothing.