head to head · open source
Saleor vs Payum
Saleor has 23,339 GitHub stars, 6,122 forks, 263 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Payum has 1,925 stars, 347 forks, 99 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. Saleor leads on adoption by 1,112% (23,339 vs 1,925 stars). Saleor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; Payum is written in PHP under MIT. Saleor has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, Payum 18%. Saleor 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
| Saleor | Payum | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.1K | ⑂ 347 |
| 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 Payum if
- You want the Payum feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Payum 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 Payum
Payum is a PHP payment processing library. It lives in the PHP e commerce ecosystem, where online stores and business software need to accept payments through external gateways. The project supports credit card purchasing, offsite purchasing, subscriptions, and payouts. It is released under the MIT license and is distributed as a PHP package.
read the full Payum overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Saleor or Payum more popular?
Saleor has 23,339 GitHub stars and Payum has 1,925. Saleor has the larger community by that measure.
Are Saleor and Payum free?
Both are open source. Saleor is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Payum under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Saleor and Payum?
Saleor is written in Python and Payum 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, Saleor or Payum?
Choose Saleor if you want the larger community (23,339 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Payum if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.