head to head · open source
Listmonk vs mailtrain
Listmonk has 24,124 GitHub stars, 2,742 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mailtrain has 5,754 stars, 706 forks, 116 open issues and last shipped 1.1 years ago. Listmonk leads on adoption by 319% (24,124 vs 5,754 stars). Listmonk is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; mailtrain is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. Listmonk has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, mailtrain 12%. Listmonk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (email-marketing), 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
| Listmonk | mailtrain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 5.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-10-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 706 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Listmonk if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mailtrain if
- You want the mailtrain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mailtrain fits your workflow better
About Listmonk
listmonk is a standalone, self hosted, newsletter and mailing list manager. It is fast, feature rich, and packed into a single binary. It uses a PostgreSQL database as its data store. Visit listmonk.app for more info. Check out the live demo . Installation Docker The latest image is available on DockerHub at listmonk/listmonk:latest . Download and use the sample docker compose.yml. Visit See installation docs Binary Download the latest release and extract the listmonk binary. ./listmonk new config to generate config.toml. Edit it. ./listmonk install to setup the Postgres DB (or upgrade to upgrade an existing DB…
read the full Listmonk overview →
About mailtrain
Mailtrain v2 Mailtrain is a self hosted newsletter application built on Node.js (v14+) and MySQL (v8+) or MariaDB (v10+). This is version 2 of Mailtrain. It mostly implements all features of v1 and add some more. It is a complete rewrite, so you will have to install it from scratch. If you are upgrading from Mailtrain v1, backup the DB and use it for Mailtrain v2. Mailtrain v2 should be able to upgrade the DB to the new schema. Features Subscriber lists management List segmentation Custom fields Email templates (including MJML based templates) Custom reports Automation (triggered and RSS campaigns) Multiple…
read the full mailtrain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Listmonk or mailtrain more popular?
Listmonk has 24,124 GitHub stars and mailtrain has 5,754. Listmonk has the larger community by that measure.
Are Listmonk and mailtrain free?
Both are open source. Listmonk is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and mailtrain under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Listmonk and mailtrain?
Listmonk is written in Go and mailtrain 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, Listmonk or mailtrain?
Choose Listmonk if you want the larger community (24,124 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mailtrain if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.