head to head · open source
Listmonk vs BillionMail
Listmonk has 23,471 GitHub stars, 2,604 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. BillionMail has 15,611 stars, 1,702 forks, 239 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Listmonk leads on adoption by 50% (23,471 vs 15,611 stars). Listmonk is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; BillionMail is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Listmonk has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, BillionMail 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 | BillionMail | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 16K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-13 | 2026-06-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Listmonk if
- You weight community size — 23K 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 BillionMail if
- You want the BillionMail 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 BillionMail fits your workflow better
About Listmonk
Listmonk is a standalone, self hosted newsletter and mailing list manager in the open source business software and marketing customer engagement ecosystem. It packages campaign management, subscriber management, and email delivery controls into a single binary application with a modern dashboard, and it uses PostgreSQL as its data store.
read the full Listmonk overview →
About BillionMail
BillionMail is an open source mail server, newsletter, and email marketing platform that runs entirely on infrastructure the operator controls. It is written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license, and it lives in the self hosted email and marketing ecosystem alongside the mail transfer and delivery components it bundles, including Postfix, Dovecot, and Rspamd. The project ships as a complete stack rather than a single binary, combining a sending server, a campaign manager, and a webmail client so that one deployment covers transactional mail, promotional campaigns, and newsletters.
read the full BillionMail overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Listmonk or BillionMail more popular?
Listmonk has 23,471 GitHub stars and BillionMail has 15,611. Listmonk has the larger community by that measure.
Are Listmonk and BillionMail free?
Both are open source. Listmonk is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and BillionMail under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Listmonk and BillionMail?
Listmonk is written in Go and BillionMail 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 BillionMail?
Choose Listmonk if you want the larger community (23,471 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose BillionMail if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.