head to head · open source
reaction vs WooCommerce
reaction has 12,400 GitHub stars, 2,169 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. WooCommerce has 10,574 stars, 10,657 forks, 1,638 open issues and last shipped yesterday. reaction leads on adoption by 17% (12,400 vs 10,574 stars). reaction is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0; WooCommerce is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. reaction has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, WooCommerce 101%. WooCommerce was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ecommerce, ecommerce-platform, 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 | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 11K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-03-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 WooCommerce if
- You want the WooCommerce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce
WooCommerce Monorepo Welcome to the WooCommerce monorepo on GitHub. Here you can find all of the plugins, packages, and tools used in the development of the core WooCommerce plugin as well as WooCommerce extensions. You can browse the source, look at open issues, contribute code, and keep track of ongoing development. We recommend all developers follow the WooCommerce development blog to stay up to date with everything happening in the project. You can also follow @DevelopWoo on X (formerly Twitter) for the latest development updates. Getting Started To get up and running within the WooCommerce Monorepo, you…
read the full WooCommerce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is reaction or WooCommerce more popular?
reaction has 12,400 GitHub stars and WooCommerce has 10,574. reaction has the larger community by that measure.
Are reaction and WooCommerce free?
Both are open source. reaction is licensed under GPL-3.0 and WooCommerce under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between reaction and WooCommerce?
reaction is written in JavaScript and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce?
Choose reaction if you want the larger community (12,400 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose WooCommerce if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.