head to head · open source
halo vs Drupal
halo has 39,787 GitHub stars, 10,329 forks, 112 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Drupal has 4,284 stars, 1,986 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped yesterday. halo leads on adoption by 829% (39,787 vs 4,284 stars). halo is written in Java under GPL-3.0; Drupal is written in PHP under a licence not recorded in this registry. halo has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, Drupal 46%. Drupal 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
| halo | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Java | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick halo if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Drupal if
- You want the Drupal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Drupal fits your workflow better
About halo
Halo is an open source, Java based website building tool licensed under GPL 3.0 that lets individuals and teams publish and run a blog, knowledge base, corporate website, or online store from infrastructure they control.
About Drupal
Drupal is an open source content management platform written in PHP, built to support websites that range from personal weblogs to large community driven websites. It lives in the Content & Publishing ecosystem, specifically in the Content Management Systems category, and has been developed by an international community on Drupal.org since 2001. The project is published under a license that ships inside the source tree at /core/LICENSE.txt , and the homepage for the distribution is at https://drupal.org/project/drupal.
read the full Drupal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is halo or Drupal more popular?
halo has 39,787 GitHub stars and Drupal has 4,284. halo has the larger community by that measure.
Are halo and Drupal free?
Both are open source. halo is licensed under GPL-3.0, and Drupal has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between halo and Drupal?
halo is written in Java and Drupal 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, halo or Drupal?
Choose halo if you want the larger community (39,787 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Drupal if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.