head to head · open source
Listmonk vs phplist3
Listmonk has 23,471 GitHub stars, 2,604 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. phplist3 has 871 stars, 290 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Listmonk leads on adoption by 2,595% (23,471 vs 871 stars). Listmonk is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; phplist3 is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. Listmonk has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, phplist3 33%. phplist3 was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (email-marketing, newsletter), 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 | phplist3 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 871 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-13 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 290 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Listmonk if
- You weight community size — 23K 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 phplist3 if
- You want the phplist3 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and phplist3 fits your workflow better
About Listmonk
Listmonk is a standalone, self hosted newsletter and mailing list manager in the open source business software and marketing customer engagement ecosystem. It packages campaign management, subscriber management, and email delivery controls into a single binary application with a modern dashboard, and it uses PostgreSQL as its data store.
read the full Listmonk overview →
About phplist3
phpList 3 is a fully functional open source email marketing manager, written in PHP and released under the AGPL 3.0 licence, for creating, sending, integrating and analysing email campaigns and newsletters, aimed at organisations that want to run campaign infrastructure on their own server rather than hand it to a third party.
read the full phplist3 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Listmonk or phplist3 more popular?
Listmonk has 23,471 GitHub stars and phplist3 has 871. Listmonk has the larger community by that measure.
Are Listmonk and phplist3 free?
Both are open source. Listmonk is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and phplist3 under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Listmonk and phplist3?
Listmonk is written in Go and phplist3 in PHP. 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 phplist3?
Choose Listmonk if you want the larger community (23,471 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose phplist3 if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.