head to head · open source
Spree Commerce vs reaction
Spree Commerce has 15,699 GitHub stars, 5,301 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. reaction has 12,399 stars, 2,176 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Spree Commerce leads on adoption by 27% (15,699 vs 12,399 stars). Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause; reaction is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. Spree Commerce has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, reaction 18%. Spree Commerce was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (e-commerce, ecommerce, ecommerce-platform, headless), 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
| Spree Commerce | reaction | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 12K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-03-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Spree Commerce if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick reaction if
- You want the reaction feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and reaction fits your workflow better
About Spree Commerce
Spree Commerce is an open source headless commerce platform written in Ruby and released under the BSD 3 Clause license. It lives in the open source e commerce ecosystem and is described as a platform for B2B, marketplaces, and enterprise use, with a REST API, a TypeScript SDK, and a Next.js storefront. It targets teams that want to self host their commerce stack, keep ownership of code, data, and infrastructure, and avoid platform fees or vendor lock in.
read the full Spree Commerce overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Spree Commerce or reaction more popular?
Spree Commerce has 15,699 GitHub stars and reaction has 12,399. Spree Commerce has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spree Commerce and reaction free?
Both are open source. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and reaction under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Spree Commerce and reaction?
Spree Commerce is written in Ruby and reaction 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, Spree Commerce or reaction?
Choose Spree Commerce if you want the larger community (15,699 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose reaction if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.