head to head · open source
mall vs tbls
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars, 29,827 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. tbls has 4,344 stars, 210 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mall leads on adoption by 1,852% (84,792 vs 4,344 stars). mall is written in Java under Apache-2.0; tbls is written in Go under MIT. mall has attracted 35% as many forks as stars, tbls 5%. tbls 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 | tbls | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 85K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 30K | ⑂ 210 |
| 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 tbls if
- You want the tbls feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tbls 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 tbls
tbls is an MIT licensed, Go written command line tool that automatically documents a database schema as Markdown and other formats, aimed at developers, data engineers, and platform teams who want schema documentation generated, diffed, and linted inside continuous integration instead of maintained by hand.
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Frequently asked questions
Is mall or tbls more popular?
mall has 84,792 GitHub stars and tbls has 4,344. mall has the larger community by that measure.
Are mall and tbls free?
Both are open source. mall is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tbls under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mall and tbls?
mall is written in Java and tbls 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 tbls?
Choose mall if you want the larger community (84,792 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tbls if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.