head to head · open source
moonshine vs tutor
moonshine has 1,300 GitHub stars, 148 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. tutor has 1,126 stars, 510 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. moonshine leads on adoption by 15% (1,300 vs 1,126 stars). moonshine is written in PHP under MIT; tutor is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. moonshine has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, tutor 45%. moonshine was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cms), 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
| moonshine | tutor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 1.3K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 148 | ⑂ 510 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick moonshine if
- You weight community size — 1.3K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick tutor if
- You want the tutor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and tutor fits your workflow better
About moonshine
MoonShine is MIT licensed PHP project listed under Business Software / Forms & Surveys. It is Laravel admin panel and builder for dashboards, tables, forms, CMS, and CRM work. It uses Blade, Alpine.js, and Tailwind CSS. It lives in Laravel ecosystem, but README says CRUD module is separated from Laravel and Eloquent, so it can also work with Symfony, Yii, or other frameworks. Repo is 4 years old, has 1301 stars, 148 forks, 2 open issues, and last push 2026 09 11.
read the full moonshine overview →
About tutor
Tutor is the official Docker based distribution of Open edX, built for both production deployments and local development. It lives in the Open edX ecosystem, written in Python and licensed under the AGPL 3.0, and it carries the stated goal of making Open edX easy to deploy, customise, upgrade and scale. The project packages the platform as a set of Docker images managed through Docker Compose, with support for Kubernetes, plugins and a hosted AWS image.
read the full tutor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is moonshine or tutor more popular?
moonshine has 1,300 GitHub stars and tutor has 1,126. moonshine has the larger community by that measure.
Are moonshine and tutor free?
Both are open source. moonshine is licensed under MIT and tutor under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between moonshine and tutor?
moonshine is written in PHP and tutor in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, moonshine or tutor?
Choose moonshine if you want the larger community (1,300 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tutor if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.