head to head · open source
Listmonk vs Shlink
Listmonk has 24,124 GitHub stars, 2,742 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Shlink has 5,402 stars, 445 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Listmonk leads on adoption by 347% (24,124 vs 5,402 stars). Listmonk is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Shlink is written in PHP under MIT. Listmonk has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Shlink 8%. Shlink was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | Shlink | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 445 |
| 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 Shlink if
- You want the Shlink feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Shlink 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 Shlink
A PHP based self hosted URL shortener that can be used to serve shortened URLs under your own domain. Table of Contents Full documentation Docker image Self hosted Download Configure Using shlink Contributing Full documentation This document contains the very basics to get started with Shlink. If you want to learn everything you can do with it, visit the full searchable documentation. Docker image You can learn how to use the official docker image by reading the docs. The idea is that you can just generate a container using the image and provide the custom config via env vars. Self hosted First, make sure the…
read the full Shlink overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Listmonk or Shlink more popular?
Listmonk has 24,124 GitHub stars and Shlink has 5,402. Listmonk has the larger community by that measure.
Are Listmonk and Shlink free?
Both are open source. Listmonk is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Shlink under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Listmonk and Shlink?
Listmonk is written in Go and Shlink 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 Shlink?
Choose Listmonk if you want the larger community (24,124 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Shlink if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.