head to head · open source
Spree Commerce vs mall4j
Spree Commerce has 15,699 GitHub stars, 5,301 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mall4j has 5,255 stars, 1,360 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Spree Commerce leads on adoption by 199% (15,699 vs 5,255 stars). Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause; mall4j is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. Spree Commerce has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, mall4j 26%. Spree Commerce 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
| Spree Commerce | mall4j | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Spree Commerce if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mall4j if
- You want the mall4j feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mall4j fits your workflow better
About Spree Commerce
Spree Commerce is an open source headless commerce platform written in Ruby and released under the BSD 3 Clause license. It lives in the open source e commerce ecosystem and is described as a platform for B2B, marketplaces, and enterprise use, with a REST API, a TypeScript SDK, and a Next.js storefront. It targets teams that want to self host their commerce stack, keep ownership of code, data, and infrastructure, and avoid platform fees or vendor lock in.
read the full Spree Commerce overview →
About mall4j
Mall4j is a Java mall system source code product family whose main open source repository provides a Spring Boot 4 and Vue3 B2C single merchant e commerce storefront and admin backend, written for developers and teams who want to study, evaluate, or build on a Java mall codebase.
read the full mall4j overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Spree Commerce or mall4j more popular?
Spree Commerce has 15,699 GitHub stars and mall4j has 5,255. Spree Commerce has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spree Commerce and mall4j free?
Both are open source. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and mall4j under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Spree Commerce and mall4j?
Spree Commerce is written in Ruby and mall4j in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Spree Commerce or mall4j?
Choose Spree Commerce if you want the larger community (15,699 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose mall4j if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.