head to head · open source
Appwrite vs mill
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars, 5,725 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mill has 2,792 stars, 447 forks, 272 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Appwrite leads on adoption by 1,956% (57,400 vs 2,792 stars). Appwrite is written in PHP under BSD-3-Clause; mill is written in Scala under MIT. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, mill 16%. Appwrite was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (android), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Appwrite | mill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 447 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Appwrite if
- You weight community size — 57K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mill if
- You want the mill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and mill fits your workflow better
About Appwrite
Appwrite is an open source backend platform that consolidates infrastructure services—authentication, databases, storage, functions, messaging, hosting, and real time capabilities—into a single, unified system. It runs as a self hosted service or via a managed cloud offering (Appwrite Cloud), targeting developers who want to avoid assembling and maintaining disparate backend tools.
read the full Appwrite overview →
About mill
Mill build tool. Java Scala Kotlin projects. Lives in JVM ecosystem. Category Developer Tools / Build & Deployment. License MIT. Language Scala. Homepage mill build.org. Stable version 1.1.9. Maven Central artifact com.lihaoyi/mill dist shown. Badge shows stable version and unstable dev version. Repo age 9 years. Last push 2026 09 14T12:22:46Z. Stars 2791. Forks 447. Open issues 272. Contributors not listed. GitHub description repeats tagline. README links current documentation site. README includes quick example.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or mill more popular?
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars and mill has 2,792. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and mill free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and mill under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and mill?
Appwrite is written in PHP and mill in Scala. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Appwrite or mill?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,400 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose mill if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.