head to head · open source
excelize vs lotus
excelize has 21,036 GitHub stars, 1,984 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lotus has 1,842 stars, 137 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped yesterday. excelize leads on adoption by 1,042% (21,036 vs 1,842 stars). excelize is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; lotus is written in Python under MIT. excelize has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lotus 7%. lotus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (analytics), 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
| excelize | lotus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 137 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick excelize if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick lotus if
- You want the lotus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and lotus fits your workflow better
About excelize
Excelize Introduction Excelize is a library written in pure Go providing a set of functions that allow you to write to and read from XLAM / XLSM / XLSX / XLTM / XLTX files. Supports reading and writing spreadsheet documents generated by Microsoft Excel™ 2007 and later. Supports complex components by high compatibility, and provided streaming API for generating or reading data from a worksheet with huge amounts of data. This library needs Go version 1.25.0 or later. The full docs can be seen using go's built in documentation tool, or online at go.dev and docs reference. Basic Usage Installation If your…
read the full excelize overview →
About lotus
Lotus: Pricing & Packaging Infrastructure For Any Business Model Usage Based, Per Seat, Bespoke Enterprise Plans And More Documentation • Lotus is a pricing and billing engine that enables SaaS companies to deploy, monitor, and experiment with custom subscriptions and complex models like usage based pricing. Lotus provides a flexible and modular control panel on top of your existing quote to cash stack that allows you to integrate data from multiple systems to help you figure out the optimal pricing scheme for your products. Getting Started :bust in silhouette: Self Hosted Version (currently the only…
read the full lotus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is excelize or lotus more popular?
excelize has 21,036 GitHub stars and lotus has 1,842. excelize has the larger community by that measure.
Are excelize and lotus free?
Both are open source. excelize is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and lotus under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between excelize and lotus?
excelize is written in Go and lotus in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, excelize or lotus?
Choose excelize if you want the larger community (21,036 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose lotus if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.