head to head · open source
halo vs piranha.core
halo has 39,797 GitHub stars, 10,329 forks, 112 open issues and last shipped today. piranha.core has 2,193 stars, 612 forks, 100 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. halo leads on adoption by 1,715% (39,797 vs 2,193 stars). halo is written in Java under GPL-3.0; piranha.core is written in C# under MIT. halo has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, piranha.core 28%. halo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cms), 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
| halo | piranha.core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 612 |
| 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 piranha.core if
- You want the piranha.core feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and piranha.core 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 piranha.core
Welcome to Piranha.Core About Piranha CMS is a decoupled, cross platform CMS built for .NET8 and Entity Framework Core . It has a modular and extensible architecture and supports a multitude of hosting and deployment scenarios. Getting started Prerequisites .NET 8.0 SDK An IDE or Editor of your choice Create a new project from our templates To use our project templates you first need to download and install them from NuGet. This can be done with: bash dotnet new install Piranha.Templates When creating a new project with dotnet new you should first create a new empty folder. The default behaviour is that the new p…
read the full piranha.core overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is halo or piranha.core more popular?
halo has 39,797 GitHub stars and piranha.core has 2,193. halo has the larger community by that measure.
Are halo and piranha.core free?
Both are open source. halo is licensed under GPL-3.0 and piranha.core under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between halo and piranha.core?
halo is written in Java and piranha.core in C#. 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 piranha.core?
Choose halo if you want the larger community (39,797 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose piranha.core if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.