head to head · open source
reaction vs thelia
reaction has 12,400 GitHub stars, 2,169 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. thelia has 882 stars, 319 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. reaction leads on adoption by 1,306% (12,400 vs 882 stars). reaction is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0; thelia is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. reaction has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, thelia 36%. thelia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (e-commerce, ecommerce, hacktoberfest), 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 | thelia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 882 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-03-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 319 |
| 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 thelia if
- You want the thelia feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and thelia fits your workflow better
About reaction
Mailchimp Open Commerce (formerly Reaction Commerce) Open Commerce Website Twitter Documentation Discord Discussions Mailchimp Open Commerce is an API first, headless commerce platform built using Node.js, MongoDB, and GraphQL. It plays nicely with npm, Docker and Kubernetes. Features Fast Returns data in split seconds, and faster queries mean faster web pages Proven Open Commerce fuels sites doing 10's of thousands of orders per day with 100's of thousands of products Composable A flexible plugin system allows you to pick and choose which integrations work best for you Multi tenant Host multiple shops in the…
read the full reaction overview →
About thelia
Thelia This is the development repository of Thelia, the open source e commerce framework. Work on Thelia itself here. To create a shop, use the project skeleton instead: thelia/thelia project. About Thelia is an open source framework for building online stores and managing web content. Version 3 runs on: PHP 8.3, 8.4 or 8.5 Symfony 7.4 LTS API Platform 4.3 (standalone) Propel ORM A Twig front office (the Flexy theme) and a Twig back office (the default twig theme) Lexik JWT for API authentication The back office and front office are built with Twig, Symfony UX (Stimulus, Twig Components and Live Components) and…
read the full thelia overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is reaction or thelia more popular?
reaction has 12,400 GitHub stars and thelia has 882. reaction has the larger community by that measure.
Are reaction and thelia free?
Both are open source. reaction is licensed under GPL-3.0 and thelia under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between reaction and thelia?
reaction is written in JavaScript and thelia in PHP. 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 thelia?
Choose reaction if you want the larger community (12,400 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose thelia if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.