head to head · open source
Saleor vs mercur
Saleor has 23,339 GitHub stars, 6,122 forks, 263 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mercur has 1,768 stars, 444 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Saleor leads on adoption by 1,220% (23,339 vs 1,768 stars). Saleor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; mercur is written in TypeScript under MIT. Saleor has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, mercur 25%. Saleor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ecommerce, headless-commerce), 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
| Saleor | mercur | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.1K | ⑂ 444 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Saleor if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mercur if
- You want the mercur feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and mercur fits your workflow better
About Saleor
Saleor is an open source e commerce platform written in Python and released under the BSD 3 Clause license. It positions itself as an open alternative to Shopify and describes itself as a high performance, composable, headless commerce API. The project lives in the e commerce ecosystem, where teams separate the backend order and catalog logic from the storefront, CMS, and dashboards.
read the full Saleor overview →
About mercur
Mercur is an open source, headless marketplace platform written in TypeScript and built on Medusa.js. It provides a storefront, vendor panel, admin console, and integrations as modular applications that communicate with a commerce core over APIs. The project targets multi vendor commerce, where several sellers list offers on one marketplace, and it positions itself as an alternative to Mirakl.
read the full mercur overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Saleor or mercur more popular?
Saleor has 23,339 GitHub stars and mercur has 1,768. Saleor has the larger community by that measure.
Are Saleor and mercur free?
Both are open source. Saleor is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and mercur under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Saleor and mercur?
Saleor is written in Python and mercur in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Saleor or mercur?
Choose Saleor if you want the larger community (23,339 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose mercur if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.