head to head · open source
halo vs qor
halo has 39,787 GitHub stars, 10,329 forks, 112 open issues and last shipped yesterday. qor has 5,343 stars, 686 forks, 61 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. halo leads on adoption by 645% (39,787 vs 5,343 stars). halo is written in Java under GPL-3.0; qor is written in Go under MIT. halo has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, qor 13%. 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 | qor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 686 |
| 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 qor if
- You want the qor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and qor 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 qor
QOR is a set of libraries written in Go that abstracts the common features needed for business applications, content management systems, and e commerce systems. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is published under the MIT license. The project is a complete rewrite in Go of the original QOR, which was a proprietary framework written in Ruby on Rails and used internally at The Plant, and version 1.0 is the first release to be open sourced.
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Frequently asked questions
Is halo or qor more popular?
halo has 39,787 GitHub stars and qor has 5,343. halo has the larger community by that measure.
Are halo and qor free?
Both are open source. halo is licensed under GPL-3.0 and qor under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between halo and qor?
halo is written in Java and qor in Go. 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 qor?
Choose halo if you want the larger community (39,787 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose qor if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.