head to head · open source
chromium vs thorium
chromium has 25,223 GitHub stars, 9,398 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thorium has 7,620 stars, 297 forks, 140 open issues and last shipped 23 days ago. chromium leads on adoption by 231% (25,223 vs 7,620 stars). chromium is written in various languages under BSD-3-Clause; thorium is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. chromium has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, thorium 4%. chromium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chromium), 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
| chromium | thorium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | — | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 297 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick chromium if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thorium if
- You want the thorium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and thorium fits your workflow better
About chromium
Chromium Chromium is an open source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all users to experience the web. The project's web site is To check out the source code locally, don't use git clone ! Instead, follow the instructions on how to get the code. Documentation in the source is rooted in docs/README.md. Learn how to Get Around the Chromium Source Code Directory Structure. For historical reasons, there are some small top level directories. Now the guidance is that new top level directories are for product (e.g. Chrome, Android WebView, Ash). Even if these products have…
read the full chromium overview →
About thorium
Thorium Chromium fork for linux named after radioactive element No. 90. Windows/MacOS/RasPi/Android/Other builds see below. Always built with the latest LTS version of Chromium. Intended to behave like and have the featureset of Google Chrome, with differences/patches/enhancements listed below. Compiler optimizations such as LTO, CFlag, LDFlag, LLVM Loop, and PGO, to make it FAST. :boom: In addition, we release builds tailored to different CPUs with different SIMD instructions, for even more execution speed. We offer SSE3, SSE4, AVX, and AVX2 builds, named as such in the Releases. If you are unsure which one to…
read the full thorium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chromium or thorium more popular?
chromium has 25,223 GitHub stars and thorium has 7,620. chromium has the larger community by that measure.
Are chromium and thorium free?
Both are open source. chromium is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and thorium under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chromium and thorium?
chromium is written in various languages and thorium in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, chromium or thorium?
Choose chromium if you want the larger community (25,223 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose thorium if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.