head to head · open source
lerna vs substance
lerna has 36,041 GitHub stars, 2,269 forks, 287 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. substance has 2,738 stars, 121 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. lerna leads on adoption by 1,216% (36,041 vs 2,738 stars). lerna is written in TypeScript under MIT; substance is written in JavaScript under MIT. lerna has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, substance 4%. 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 | substance | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-04-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 121 |
| 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 substance if
- You want the substance feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and substance 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 substance
Substance.js Substance is a JavaScript library for web based content editing. It provides building blocks for realizing custom text editors and web based publishing system. It is developed to power our online editing platform Substance. Development Install the dev dependencies. Run the dev server. Navigate to for the running the browser test suite. The test suite is rebuilt as you make changes to the source files. To run the test suite headless.
read the full substance overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lerna or substance more popular?
lerna has 36,041 GitHub stars and substance has 2,738. lerna has the larger community by that measure.
Are lerna and substance free?
Both are open source. lerna is licensed under MIT and substance under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lerna and substance?
lerna is written in TypeScript and substance in JavaScript. 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 substance?
Choose lerna if you want the larger community (36,041 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose substance if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.