head to head · open source
so-novel vs papermill
so-novel has 8,157 GitHub stars, 726 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. papermill has 6,485 stars, 462 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. so-novel leads on adoption by 26% (8,157 vs 6,485 stars). so-novel is written in Java under AGPL-3.0; papermill is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. so-novel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, papermill 7%. so-novel 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
| so-novel | papermill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.2K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-07-26 | 2026-07-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 726 | ⑂ 462 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick so-novel if
- You weight community size — 8.2K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick papermill if
- You want the papermill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and papermill fits your workflow better
About so-novel
So Novel is an AGPL 3.0 Java tool that extracts structured content from web pages and exports it as standard ebook and document formats including EPUB, TXT, and PDF, built for people who want offline copies of web fiction and for anyone turning web content into readable documents.
read the full so-novel overview →
About papermill
Papermill is a Python tool published under the BSD 3 Clause licence by the nteract project that parameterizes, executes, and analyzes Jupyter notebooks, and it is aimed at teams who need to run the same notebook repeatedly with different inputs inside data pipelines.
read the full papermill overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is so-novel or papermill more popular?
so-novel has 8,157 GitHub stars and papermill has 6,485. so-novel has the larger community by that measure.
Are so-novel and papermill free?
Both are open source. so-novel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and papermill under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between so-novel and papermill?
so-novel is written in Java and papermill 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, so-novel or papermill?
Choose so-novel if you want the larger community (8,157 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose papermill if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.