head to head · open source
mall vs bun
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars, 29,827 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. bun has 4,976 stars, 307 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 29 days ago. mall leads on adoption by 1,604% (84,792 vs 4,976 stars). mall is written in Java under Apache-2.0; bun is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause. mall has attracted 35% as many forks as stars, bun 6%. mall was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (mysql), 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
| mall | bun | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 85K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-08-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 30K | ⑂ 307 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick mall if
- You weight community size — 85K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick bun if
- You want the bun feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and bun fits your workflow better
About mall
mall is a complete e commerce system built on Spring Boot and MyBatis, distributed as a Java project under the Apache 2.0 license. It ships two applications in one repository: a storefront system for shoppers and an administrative back office for operators. The storefront covers the home portal, product recommendation, product search, product display, shopping cart, order flow, member center, customer service, and help center. The back office covers product management, order management, member management, promotion management, operations management, content management, statistics reports, finance management, perm…
About bun
Bun is a lightweight, SQL first object relational mapper for Go that gives backend engineers type safe access to PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, MSSQL, SQLite, and Oracle from one database agnostic codebase.
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Frequently asked questions
Is mall or bun more popular?
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars and bun has 4,976. mall has the larger community by that measure.
Are mall and bun free?
Both are open source. mall is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bun under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mall and bun?
mall is written in Java and bun in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, mall or bun?
Choose mall if you want the larger community (84,792 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bun if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.