head to head · open source
Saleor vs reaction
Saleor has 23,339 GitHub stars, 6,122 forks, 263 open issues and last shipped yesterday. reaction has 12,399 stars, 2,176 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Saleor leads on adoption by 88% (23,339 vs 12,399 stars). Saleor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; reaction is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. Saleor has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, reaction 18%. Saleor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 6 topic tags (cart, commerce, e-commerce, ecommerce), 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 | reaction | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 12K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-03-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.1K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 reaction if
- You want the reaction feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and reaction 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 reaction
Mailchimp Open Commerce, formerly Reaction Commerce, is an API first, headless commerce platform built on Node.js, MongoDB, and GraphQL for development teams that want to run a custom storefront, marketplace, or multi shop operation on their own infrastructure — and the project has been discontinued.
read the full reaction overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Saleor or reaction more popular?
Saleor has 23,339 GitHub stars and reaction has 12,399. Saleor has the larger community by that measure.
Are Saleor and reaction free?
Both are open source. Saleor is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and reaction under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Saleor and reaction?
Saleor is written in Python and reaction in JavaScript. 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 reaction?
Choose Saleor if you want the larger community (23,339 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose reaction if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.