head to head · open source
lerna vs turborepo
lerna has 36,053 GitHub stars, 2,265 forks, 287 open issues and last shipped yesterday. turborepo has 31,102 stars, 2,445 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped today. lerna leads on adoption by 16% (36,053 vs 31,102 stars). lerna is written in TypeScript under MIT; turborepo is written in Rust under MIT. lerna has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, turborepo 8%. turborepo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (monorepo), 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 | turborepo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 31K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 turborepo if
- You want the turborepo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and turborepo fits your workflow better
About lerna
Lerna is a fast, modern build system for managing and publishing multiple JavaScript/TypeScript packages from the same repository, aimed at teams that maintain monorepos and publish packages to npm.
read the full lerna overview →
About turborepo
Turborepo is a build system for JavaScript and TypeScript monorepos, written in Rust and released under the MIT licence, intended for teams that build many packages inside one repository and for the coding agents those teams run against it.
read the full turborepo overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lerna or turborepo more popular?
lerna has 36,053 GitHub stars and turborepo has 31,102. lerna has the larger community by that measure.
Are lerna and turborepo free?
Both are open source. lerna is licensed under MIT and turborepo under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lerna and turborepo?
lerna is written in TypeScript and turborepo in Rust. 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 turborepo?
Choose lerna if you want the larger community (36,053 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose turborepo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.