head to head · open source
decap-cms vs OrchardCore
decap-cms has 19,461 GitHub stars, 3,139 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. OrchardCore has 8,223 stars, 2,607 forks, 854 open issues and last shipped yesterday. decap-cms leads on adoption by 137% (19,461 vs 8,223 stars). decap-cms is written in JavaScript under MIT; OrchardCore is written in C# under BSD-3-Clause. decap-cms has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, OrchardCore 32%. OrchardCore was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cms), 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
| decap-cms | OrchardCore | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick decap-cms if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OrchardCore if
- You want the OrchardCore 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 OrchardCore fits your workflow better
About decap-cms
Documentation: decapcms.org A CMS for static site generators. Give teams a simple way to edit and add content to any site built with a static site generator. Decap CMS is the new name of Netlify CMS since February 2023. Join us on Discord for community chat. How It Works Decap CMS is a single page app that you pull into the /admin part of your site. It presents a clean UI for editing content stored in a Git repository. You setup a YAML config to describe the content model of your site, and typically tweak the main layout of the CMS a bit to fit your own site. When a user navigates to /admin/ they'll be prompted…
read the full decap-cms overview →
About OrchardCore
Orchard Core Orchard Core is an open source, modular, multi tenant application framework and CMS for ASP.NET Core. Orchard Core consists of two distinct projects: Orchard Core Framework : An application framework for building modular, multi tenant applications on ASP.NET Core. Orchard Core CMS : A Web Content Management System (CMS) built on top of the Orchard Core Framework. Build Status Stable ( release/3.0 ): Nightly ( main ): Project Status: v3.0.1 The software is production ready and capable of serving large, mission critical applications. We are not aware of any fundamental bugs or missing features we deem…
read the full OrchardCore overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is decap-cms or OrchardCore more popular?
decap-cms has 19,461 GitHub stars and OrchardCore has 8,223. decap-cms has the larger community by that measure.
Are decap-cms and OrchardCore free?
Both are open source. decap-cms is licensed under MIT and OrchardCore under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between decap-cms and OrchardCore?
decap-cms is written in JavaScript and OrchardCore 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, decap-cms or OrchardCore?
Choose decap-cms if you want the larger community (19,461 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OrchardCore if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.