head to head · open source
Shopware vs thelia
Shopware has 3,468 GitHub stars, 1,219 forks, 1,356 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thelia has 882 stars, 320 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Shopware leads on adoption by 293% (3,468 vs 882 stars). Shopware is written in PHP under MIT; thelia is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. Shopware has attracted 35% as many forks as stars, thelia 36%. Shopware was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ecommerce, hacktoberfest), 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
| Shopware | thelia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.5K | ★ 882 |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 320 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Shopware if
- You weight community size — 3.5K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- 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 Shopware
Shopware Modern open source e Commerce Shopware 6 is an open headless commerce platform powered by Symfony 7 and Vue.js 3 that is used by thousands of shops and supported by a huge, worldwide community of developers, agencies, and merchants. If you like Shopware 6, give us a ⭐️ on GitHub! 🙋♂️ Be part of shopware! We are hiring! 🙋 🌎 Discover our website 🧩 Browse more than 3,100 extensions in our community store 📖 Learn how to develop extensions and everything else about the tech behind Shopware via our developer docs. 🉐 Translate Shopware or help by contributing to existing languages 🛠 Report bugs in…
read the full Shopware 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Shopware or thelia more popular?
Shopware has 3,468 GitHub stars and thelia has 882. Shopware has the larger community by that measure.
Are Shopware and thelia free?
Both are open source. Shopware is licensed under MIT and thelia under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Shopware and thelia?
Shopware is written in PHP 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, Shopware or thelia?
Choose Shopware if you want the larger community (3,468 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose thelia if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.