head to head · open source
Listmonk vs Billion Mail
Listmonk has 24,124 GitHub stars, 2,742 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Billion Mail has 16,171 stars, 1,801 forks, 236 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. Listmonk leads on adoption by 49% (24,124 vs 16,171 stars). Listmonk is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Billion Mail is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Listmonk has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Billion Mail 11%. Listmonk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (email-marketing, newsletter, smtp), 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
| Listmonk | Billion Mail | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 16K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-06-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Listmonk if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Billion Mail if
- You want the Billion Mail feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Billion Mail fits your workflow better
About Listmonk
listmonk is a standalone, self hosted, newsletter and mailing list manager. It is fast, feature rich, and packed into a single binary. It uses a PostgreSQL database as its data store. Visit listmonk.app for more info. Check out the live demo . Installation Docker The latest image is available on DockerHub at listmonk/listmonk:latest . Download and use the sample docker compose.yml. Visit See installation docs Binary Download the latest release and extract the listmonk binary. ./listmonk new config to generate config.toml. Edit it. ./listmonk install to setup the Postgres DB (or upgrade to upgrade an existing DB…
read the full Listmonk overview →
About Billion Mail
BillionMail 📧 An Open Source MailServer, NewsLetter, Email Marketing Solution for Smarter Campaigns [![][license shield]][license link] [![][docs shield]][docs link] [![][github release shield]][github release link] [![][github stars shield]][github stars link] English 简体中文 日本語 Türkçe What is BillionMail? BillionMail is a future open source Mail server, Email marketing platform designed to help businesses and individuals manage their email campaigns with ease. Whether you're sending newsletters, promotional emails, or transactional messages, this tool will provide full control over your email marketing efforts…
read the full Billion Mail overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Listmonk or Billion Mail more popular?
Listmonk has 24,124 GitHub stars and Billion Mail has 16,171. Listmonk has the larger community by that measure.
Are Listmonk and Billion Mail free?
Both are open source. Listmonk is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Billion Mail under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Listmonk and Billion Mail?
Listmonk is written in Go and Billion Mail in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Listmonk or Billion Mail?
Choose Listmonk if you want the larger community (24,124 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Billion Mail if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.