head to head · open source
mall vs lettuce
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars, 29,827 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. lettuce has 5,778 stars, 1,101 forks, 204 open issues and last shipped today. mall leads on adoption by 1,367% (84,792 vs 5,778 stars). mall is written in Java under Apache-2.0; lettuce is written in Java under MIT. mall has attracted 35% as many forks as stars, lettuce 19%. lettuce was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (java, redis), 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 | lettuce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 85K | ★ 5.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 30K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 lettuce if
- You want the lettuce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and lettuce 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 lettuce
Lettuce is an MIT licensed, thread safe Java Redis client from the Redis organization that speaks to Redis over synchronous, asynchronous, and reactive APIs, and it is aimed at Java teams running Redis or Redis compatible caches such as AWS ElastiCache and Azure Redis Cache.
read the full lettuce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is mall or lettuce more popular?
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars and lettuce has 5,778. mall has the larger community by that measure.
Are mall and lettuce free?
Both are open source. mall is licensed under Apache-2.0 and lettuce under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mall and lettuce?
mall is written in Java and lettuce in Java. 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 lettuce?
Choose mall if you want the larger community (84,792 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lettuce if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.