head to head · open source
SingleFile vs thorium
SingleFile has 22,411 GitHub stars, 1,410 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thorium has 7,508 stars, 283 forks, 140 open issues and last shipped 26 days ago. SingleFile leads on adoption by 198% (22,411 vs 7,508 stars). SingleFile is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; thorium is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. SingleFile has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, thorium 4%. SingleFile was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chrome), 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
| SingleFile | thorium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 283 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SingleFile if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thorium if
- You want the thorium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and thorium fits your workflow better
About SingleFile
SingleFile is a web extension, and also a command line tool, that saves a complete web page into a single HTML file. It is written in JavaScript and released under the AGPL 3.0 license, and it lives in the browser extension ecosystem, with builds published for Chrome, Firefox (desktop and mobile), Microsoft Edge, Safari, Vivaldi, Brave, Waterfox, Yandex browser, and Opera. The project has been developed for roughly sixteen years and is distributed through the extension stores of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge, as well as through manual installation from the project archive.
read the full SingleFile overview →
About thorium
Thorium is a BSD 3 Clause licensed Chromium fork, written in C++ and named after radioactive element No. 90, that ships optimised Linux builds here while Windows, macOS, Android and Raspberry Pi builds live in companion repositories.
read the full thorium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SingleFile or thorium more popular?
SingleFile has 22,411 GitHub stars and thorium has 7,508. SingleFile has the larger community by that measure.
Are SingleFile and thorium free?
Both are open source. SingleFile is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and thorium under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SingleFile and thorium?
SingleFile is written in JavaScript and thorium in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, SingleFile or thorium?
Choose SingleFile if you want the larger community (22,411 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose thorium if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.