head to head · open source
Listmonk vs phplist3
Listmonk has 24,124 GitHub stars, 2,742 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. phplist3 has 879 stars, 289 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Listmonk leads on adoption by 2,644% (24,124 vs 879 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Listmonk | phplist3 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 879 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 289 |
| 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 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. 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 phplist3
Fully functional Open Source email marketing manager for creating, sending, integrating, and analysing email campaigns and newsletters: phpList includes analytics, segmentation, content personalisation, bounce processing, plugin based architecture, and multiple APIs. Used in 95 countries, available in 20 languages, and used to send more than 25 billion campaign messages in 2018. Deploy it on your own server, or get a hosted account at Community Hosted Demo Features Responsive web based, and command line interfaces Real time analytics: track message responses and subscriber behaviour Message queue management…
read the full phplist3 overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Marketing & Customer Engagement projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Marketing & Customer Engagement field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Listmonk or phplist3 more popular?
Listmonk has 24,124 GitHub stars and phplist3 has 879. 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 (24,124 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.