head to head · open source
reaction vs mern-marketplace
reaction has 12,399 GitHub stars, 2,175 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. mern-marketplace has 595 stars, 234 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. reaction leads on adoption by 1,984% (12,399 vs 595 stars). reaction is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0; mern-marketplace is written in JavaScript under MIT. reaction has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, mern-marketplace 39%. mern-marketplace was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ecommerce, mongodb), 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
| reaction | mern-marketplace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 595 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-03-01 | 2026-03-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 234 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick reaction if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mern-marketplace if
- You want the mern-marketplace feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mern-marketplace fits your workflow better
About reaction
Mailchimp Open Commerce, formerly Reaction Commerce, is an API first, headless commerce platform built on Node.js, MongoDB, and GraphQL for development teams that want to run a custom storefront, marketplace, or multi shop operation on their own infrastructure — and the project has been discontinued.
read the full reaction overview →
About mern-marketplace
MERN Marketplace 2.0 Looking for the first edition code? Check here An online marketplace application with seller accounts, product search and suggestions, shopping cart, order management, payment processing with Stripe, and live auction with Socket.io developed using React, Node, Express and MongoDB. Live Demo What you need to run this code 1. Node (13.12.0) 2. NPM (6.14.4) or Yarn (1.22.4) 3. MongoDB (4.2.0) 4. Stripe account with test data How to run this code 1. Make sure MongoDB is running on your system 2. Clone this repository 3. Update config/config.js with your test values for Stripe API keys and Stripe …
read the full mern-marketplace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is reaction or mern-marketplace more popular?
reaction has 12,399 GitHub stars and mern-marketplace has 595. reaction has the larger community by that measure.
Are reaction and mern-marketplace free?
Both are open source. reaction is licensed under GPL-3.0 and mern-marketplace under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between reaction and mern-marketplace?
reaction is written in JavaScript and mern-marketplace in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, reaction or mern-marketplace?
Choose reaction if you want the larger community (12,399 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mern-marketplace if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.