head to head · open source
Saleor vs WooCommerce
Saleor has 23,339 GitHub stars, 6,122 forks, 263 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WooCommerce has 10,514 stars, 10,675 forks, 1,638 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Saleor leads on adoption by 122% (23,339 vs 10,514 stars). Saleor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; WooCommerce is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence. Saleor has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, WooCommerce 102%. 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 | ★ 23K | ★ 11K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Custom / other |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.1K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 WooCommerce if
- You want the WooCommerce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open source ecommerce platform built on WordPress. It lives in the WordPress ecosystem, where a website owner can add commerce functionality through a plugin. The project is described as customizable and positioned as an open alternative to Shopify.
read the full WooCommerce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Saleor or WooCommerce more popular?
Saleor has 23,339 GitHub stars and WooCommerce has 10,514. 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 has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
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 (23,339 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose WooCommerce if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.