head to head · open source
halo vs sulu
halo has 39,797 GitHub stars, 10,329 forks, 112 open issues and last shipped today. sulu has 1,350 stars, 368 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped yesterday. halo leads on adoption by 2,848% (39,797 vs 1,350 stars). halo is written in Java under GPL-3.0; sulu is written in PHP under MIT. halo has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, sulu 27%. 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 | sulu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 368 |
| 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 sulu if
- You want the sulu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and sulu 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 sulu
Sulu is a highly extensible open source PHP content management system based on the Symfony framework. Sulu is developed to deliver robust multi lingual and multi portal websites while providing an intuitive and extensible administration interface to manage the full content lifecycle. Have a look at the official Sulu website for a comprehensive list of Sulu's features, core values and use cases. This repository contains the core framework of the Sulu content management system . The framework implements the functionality that is built into the Sulu content management system and therefore is a dependency of all Sulu…
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Frequently asked questions
Is halo or sulu more popular?
halo has 39,797 GitHub stars and sulu has 1,350. halo has the larger community by that measure.
Are halo and sulu free?
Both are open source. halo is licensed under GPL-3.0 and sulu under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between halo and sulu?
halo is written in Java and sulu 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 sulu?
Choose halo if you want the larger community (39,797 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sulu if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.