head to head · open source
lerna vs papermill
lerna has 36,041 GitHub stars, 2,269 forks, 287 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. papermill has 6,498 stars, 465 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped 29 days ago. lerna leads on adoption by 455% (36,041 vs 6,498 stars). lerna is written in TypeScript under MIT; papermill is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. lerna has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, papermill 7%. lerna was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (publishing), 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
| lerna | papermill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-10-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 465 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lerna if
- You weight community size — 36K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick papermill if
- You want the papermill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and papermill fits your workflow better
About lerna
Important note: this project changed stewardship to Nx! Your favorite tool is alive and well: Lerna is a fast, modern build system for managing and publishing multiple JavaScript/TypeScript packages from the same repository. A few links to help you get started: lerna.js.org: Documentation, Guides, Interactive Tutorials Getting Started Features Official Nx and Lerna YouTube Channel Blog Posts About Lerna and Nx Engage with the Core Team and the Community Follow Lerna on Twitter Community Discord, forum channel Want to help? If you want to file a bug or submit a PR, read up on our guidelines for contributing Core…
read the full lerna overview →
About papermill
papermill is a tool for parameterizing, executing, and analyzing Jupyter Notebooks. Papermill lets you: parameterize notebooks execute notebooks This opens up new opportunities for how notebooks can be used. For example: Perhaps you have a financial report that you wish to run with different values on the first or last day of a month or at the beginning or end of the year, using parameters makes this task easier. Do you want to run a notebook and depending on its results, choose a particular notebook to run next? You can now programmatically execute a workflow without having to copy and paste from notebook to…
read the full papermill overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lerna or papermill more popular?
lerna has 36,041 GitHub stars and papermill has 6,498. lerna has the larger community by that measure.
Are lerna and papermill free?
Both are open source. lerna is licensed under MIT and papermill under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lerna and papermill?
lerna is written in TypeScript and papermill in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, lerna or papermill?
Choose lerna if you want the larger community (36,041 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose papermill if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.