head to head · open source
Helium vs thorium
Helium has 22,358 GitHub stars, 683 forks, 490 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thorium has 7,627 stars, 299 forks, 140 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. Helium leads on adoption by 193% (22,358 vs 7,627 stars). Helium is written in C++ under GPL-3.0; thorium is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. Helium has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, thorium 4%. Helium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chromium), 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
| Helium | thorium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 683 | ⑂ 299 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Helium if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thorium if
- You want the thorium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and thorium fits your workflow better
About Helium
Helium The Chromium based web browser made for people, with love. Privacy first with unbiased ad blocking. No bloat and no noise. helium.computer Downloads [!NOTE] Helium is currently in beta, so unexpected issues may occur. Please report them if they haven't already been reported. The easiest way to download Helium is helium.computer. It'll pick a compatible binary for your platform automatically. The same releases can also be downloaded from source on GitHub: Latest macOS release Latest Linux release Latest Windows release Helium repos All Helium packaging, tooling, services, and components are open source and…
read the full Helium overview →
About thorium
Thorium Chromium fork for linux named after radioactive element No. 90. Windows/MacOS/RasPi/Android/Other builds see below. Always built with the latest LTS version of Chromium. Intended to behave like and have the featureset of Google Chrome, with differences/patches/enhancements listed below. Compiler optimizations such as LTO, CFlag, LDFlag, LLVM Loop, and PGO, to make it FAST. :boom: In addition, we release builds tailored to different CPUs with different SIMD instructions, for even more execution speed. We offer SSE3, SSE4, AVX, and AVX2 builds, named as such in the Releases. If you are unsure which one to…
read the full thorium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Helium or thorium more popular?
Helium has 22,358 GitHub stars and thorium has 7,627. Helium has the larger community by that measure.
Are Helium and thorium free?
Both are open source. Helium is licensed under GPL-3.0 and thorium under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Helium and thorium?
Helium is written in C++ and thorium 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, Helium or thorium?
Choose Helium if you want the larger community (22,358 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose thorium if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.