head to head · open source
Saleor vs WooCommerce
Saleor has 23,503 GitHub stars, 6,170 forks, 263 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WooCommerce has 10,574 stars, 10,657 forks, 1,638 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Saleor leads on adoption by 122% (23,503 vs 10,574 stars). Saleor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; WooCommerce is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. Saleor has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, WooCommerce 101%. WooCommerce was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 11K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 WooCommerce if
- You want the WooCommerce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce
WooCommerce Monorepo Welcome to the WooCommerce monorepo on GitHub. Here you can find all of the plugins, packages, and tools used in the development of the core WooCommerce plugin as well as WooCommerce extensions. You can browse the source, look at open issues, contribute code, and keep track of ongoing development. We recommend all developers follow the WooCommerce development blog to stay up to date with everything happening in the project. You can also follow @DevelopWoo on X (formerly Twitter) for the latest development updates. Getting Started To get up and running within the WooCommerce Monorepo, you…
read the full WooCommerce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Saleor or WooCommerce more popular?
Saleor has 23,503 GitHub stars and WooCommerce has 10,574. Saleor has the larger community by that measure.
Are Saleor and WooCommerce free?
Both are open source. Saleor is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and WooCommerce under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Saleor and WooCommerce?
Saleor is written in Python and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce?
Choose Saleor if you want the larger community (23,503 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose WooCommerce if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.