head to head · open source
excelize vs phplist3
excelize has 20,918 GitHub stars, 1,949 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. phplist3 has 871 stars, 290 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. excelize leads on adoption by 2,302% (20,918 vs 871 stars). excelize is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; phplist3 is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. excelize has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, phplist3 33%. excelize was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | phplist3 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 871 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 290 |
| 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 phplist3 if
- You want the phplist3 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and phplist3 fits your workflow better
About excelize
Excelize is a pure Go library for reading and writing XLAM, XLSM, XLSX, XLTM and XLTX spreadsheets, built for Go developers who need to generate or parse Microsoft Excel 2007 and later workbooks directly from their own code.
read the full excelize overview →
About phplist3
phpList 3 is a fully functional open source email marketing manager, written in PHP and released under the AGPL 3.0 licence, for creating, sending, integrating and analysing email campaigns and newsletters, aimed at organisations that want to run campaign infrastructure on their own server rather than hand it to a third party.
read the full phplist3 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is excelize or phplist3 more popular?
excelize has 20,918 GitHub stars and phplist3 has 871. excelize has the larger community by that measure.
Are excelize and phplist3 free?
Both are open source. excelize is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and phplist3 under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between excelize and phplist3?
excelize is written in Go and phplist3 in PHP. 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 phplist3?
Choose excelize if you want the larger community (20,918 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose phplist3 if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.