head to head · open source
BillionMail vs growth-lab
BillionMail has 15,619 GitHub stars, 1,704 forks, 239 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. growth-lab has 1,988 stars, 170 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. BillionMail leads on adoption by 686% (15,619 vs 1,988 stars). BillionMail is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; growth-lab is written in Python under Apache-2.0. BillionMail has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, growth-lab 9%. growth-lab 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
| BillionMail | growth-lab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-06-11 | 2026-08-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 170 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick BillionMail if
- You weight community size — 16K 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 growth-lab if
- You want the growth-lab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and growth-lab fits your workflow better
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 →
About growth-lab
Growth Lab is an open source Python growth tool in the business software and marketing customer engagement ecosystem. It understands a product, fetches needed data, researches the market, executes campaign actions, and reviews results to improve the next growth round. It runs inside Codex or Claude Code as the application runtime.
read the full growth-lab overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is BillionMail or growth-lab more popular?
BillionMail has 15,619 GitHub stars and growth-lab has 1,988. BillionMail has the larger community by that measure.
Are BillionMail and growth-lab free?
Both are open source. BillionMail is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and growth-lab under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between BillionMail and growth-lab?
BillionMail is written in Go and growth-lab 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, BillionMail or growth-lab?
Choose BillionMail if you want the larger community (15,619 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose growth-lab if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.