head to head · open source
mall vs dbmate
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars, 29,827 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. dbmate has 7,391 stars, 379 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mall leads on adoption by 1,047% (84,792 vs 7,391 stars). mall is written in Java under Apache-2.0; dbmate is written in Go under MIT. mall has attracted 35% as many forks as stars, dbmate 5%. dbmate was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (docker, 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 | dbmate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 85K | ★ 7.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 30K | ⑂ 379 |
| 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 dbmate if
- You want the dbmate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dbmate 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 dbmate
Dbmate is a standalone, MIT licensed command line database migration tool written in Go that keeps database schema in sync across multiple developers and production servers, aimed at teams building database backed applications in any language or framework.
read the full dbmate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is mall or dbmate more popular?
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars and dbmate has 7,391. mall has the larger community by that measure.
Are mall and dbmate free?
Both are open source. mall is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbmate under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mall and dbmate?
mall is written in Java and dbmate 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 dbmate?
Choose mall if you want the larger community (84,792 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbmate if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.