head to head · open source
mall vs martin
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars, 29,827 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. martin has 3,925 stars, 388 forks, 52 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mall leads on adoption by 2,060% (84,792 vs 3,925 stars). mall is written in Java under Apache-2.0; martin is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. mall has attracted 35% as many forks as stars, martin 10%. martin 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
| mall | martin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 85K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 30K | ⑂ 388 |
| 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 martin if
- You want the martin feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and martin 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 martin
Martin is a Rust based tile server and toolkit from the MapLibre project that generates vector tiles on the fly from PostgreSQL/PostGIS databases and GeoJSON files, serves tiles from PMTiles, MBTiles and GeoParquet sources, and ships command line tooling for bulk tile generation and MBTiles maintenance, aimed at teams that self host map tiles under heavy traffic.
read the full martin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is mall or martin more popular?
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars and martin has 3,925. mall has the larger community by that measure.
Are mall and martin free?
Both are open source. mall is licensed under Apache-2.0 and martin under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mall and martin?
mall is written in Java and martin in Rust. 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 martin?
Choose mall if you want the larger community (84,792 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose martin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.