head to head · open source
growth-lab vs mailcheap
growth-lab has 1,992 GitHub stars, 172 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. mailcheap has 933 stars, 233 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped today. growth-lab leads on adoption by 114% (1,992 vs 933 stars). growth-lab is written in Python under Apache-2.0; mailcheap is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. growth-lab has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, mailcheap 25%. mailcheap 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
| growth-lab | mailcheap | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 2.0K | ★ 933 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 172 | ⑂ 233 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick growth-lab if
- You weight community size — 2.0K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mailcheap if
- You want the mailcheap feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mailcheap fits your workflow better
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 →
About mailcheap
MailCheap is an open source newsletter application in JavaScript — dashboard, public archive, REST API and MCP server in one Next.js app — for writers, teams and agent builders who want to keep their subscriber list in their own database and pay a sending provider per email instead of paying a platform per subscriber.
read the full mailcheap overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is growth-lab or mailcheap more popular?
growth-lab has 1,992 GitHub stars and mailcheap has 933. growth-lab has the larger community by that measure.
Are growth-lab and mailcheap free?
Both are open source. growth-lab is licensed under Apache-2.0 and mailcheap under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between growth-lab and mailcheap?
growth-lab is written in Python and mailcheap in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, growth-lab or mailcheap?
Choose growth-lab if you want the larger community (1,992 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose mailcheap if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.