head to head · open source
Listmonk vs mailcheap
Listmonk has 23,784 GitHub stars, 2,676 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped today. mailcheap has 933 stars, 233 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped today. Listmonk leads on adoption by 2,449% (23,784 vs 933 stars). Listmonk is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; mailcheap is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. Listmonk has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, mailcheap 25%. mailcheap was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (newsletter, self-hosted), 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 | mailcheap | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 933 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-15 | 2026-10-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 233 |
| 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 mailcheap if
- You want the mailcheap feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mailcheap 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 mailcheap
MailCheap is an open source newsletter application in JavaScript — dashboard, public archive, REST API and MCP server in one Next.js app — for writers, teams and agent builders who want to keep their subscriber list in their own database and pay a sending provider per email instead of paying a platform per subscriber.
read the full mailcheap overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Listmonk or mailcheap more popular?
Listmonk has 23,784 GitHub stars and mailcheap has 933. Listmonk has the larger community by that measure.
Are Listmonk and mailcheap free?
Both are open source. Listmonk is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and mailcheap under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Listmonk and mailcheap?
Listmonk is written in Go and mailcheap 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 mailcheap?
Choose Listmonk if you want the larger community (23,784 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mailcheap if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.