head to head · open source
Saleor vs thelia
Saleor has 23,503 GitHub stars, 6,170 forks, 263 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thelia has 882 stars, 319 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Saleor leads on adoption by 2,565% (23,503 vs 882 stars). Saleor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; thelia is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. Saleor has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, thelia 36%. thelia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Saleor | thelia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 882 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 319 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Saleor if
- You weight community size — 24K 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 thelia if
- You want the thelia feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and thelia fits your workflow better
About Saleor
Commerce that works with your language and stack GraphQL native, API only platform for scalable composable commerce. Get to know Saleor: Talk to a human Talk to the API Join our community: Website Twitter Discord Blog Subscribe to newsletter Table of Contents What makes Saleor special? Why API only Architecture? Features Installation Documentation Saleor Platform Storefront Dashboard Contributing License What makes Saleor special? Technology agnostic no monolithic plugin architecture or technology lock in. GraphQL only Not afterthought API design or fragmentation across different styles of API. Headless and API…
read the full Saleor overview →
About thelia
Thelia This is the development repository of Thelia, the open source e commerce framework. Work on Thelia itself here. To create a shop, use the project skeleton instead: thelia/thelia project. About Thelia is an open source framework for building online stores and managing web content. Version 3 runs on: PHP 8.3, 8.4 or 8.5 Symfony 7.4 LTS API Platform 4.3 (standalone) Propel ORM A Twig front office (the Flexy theme) and a Twig back office (the default twig theme) Lexik JWT for API authentication The back office and front office are built with Twig, Symfony UX (Stimulus, Twig Components and Live Components) and…
read the full thelia overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More E-commerce Platforms projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the E-commerce Platforms field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Saleor or thelia more popular?
Saleor has 23,503 GitHub stars and thelia has 882. Saleor has the larger community by that measure.
Are Saleor and thelia free?
Both are open source. Saleor is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and thelia under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Saleor and thelia?
Saleor is written in Python and thelia 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 thelia?
Choose Saleor if you want the larger community (23,503 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose thelia if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.