head to head · open source
BillionMail vs roapi
BillionMail has 15,619 GitHub stars, 1,704 forks, 239 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. roapi has 3,434 stars, 209 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. BillionMail leads on adoption by 355% (15,619 vs 3,434 stars). BillionMail is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; roapi is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. BillionMail has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, roapi 6%. BillionMail 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
| BillionMail | roapi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-06-11 | 2026-03-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 209 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick BillionMail if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick roapi if
- You want the roapi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and roapi fits your workflow better
About BillionMail
BillionMail is an open source mail server, newsletter, and email marketing platform that runs entirely on infrastructure the operator controls. It is written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license, and it lives in the self hosted email and marketing ecosystem alongside the mail transfer and delivery components it bundles, including Postfix, Dovecot, and Rspamd. The project ships as a complete stack rather than a single binary, combining a sending server, a campaign manager, and a webmail client so that one deployment covers transactional mail, promotional campaigns, and newsletters.
read the full BillionMail overview →
About roapi
ROAPI is a Rust based, Apache 2.0 licensed server that turns static and slowly changing datasets into read only SQL, FlightSQL, GraphQL and REST APIs without requiring a single line of application code, and it is built for data engineers, analysts and developers who need to publish Parquet, CSV, JSON or database tables as queryable endpoints quickly.
read the full roapi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is BillionMail or roapi more popular?
BillionMail has 15,619 GitHub stars and roapi has 3,434. BillionMail has the larger community by that measure.
Are BillionMail and roapi free?
Both are open source. BillionMail is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and roapi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between BillionMail and roapi?
BillionMail is written in Go and roapi in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, BillionMail or roapi?
Choose BillionMail if you want the larger community (15,619 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose roapi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.