head to head · open source
Spree Commerce vs mercur
Spree Commerce has 15,699 GitHub stars, 5,301 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mercur has 1,768 stars, 444 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Spree Commerce leads on adoption by 788% (15,699 vs 1,768 stars). Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause; mercur is written in TypeScript under MIT. Spree Commerce has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, mercur 25%. Spree Commerce was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ecommerce, headless-commerce, marketplace, multi-vendor), 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 | mercur | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 444 |
| 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 mercur if
- You want the mercur feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and mercur 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 mercur
Mercur is an open source, headless marketplace platform written in TypeScript and built on Medusa.js. It provides a storefront, vendor panel, admin console, and integrations as modular applications that communicate with a commerce core over APIs. The project targets multi vendor commerce, where several sellers list offers on one marketplace, and it positions itself as an alternative to Mirakl.
read the full mercur overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Spree Commerce or mercur more popular?
Spree Commerce has 15,699 GitHub stars and mercur has 1,768. Spree Commerce has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spree Commerce and mercur free?
Both are open source. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and mercur under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Spree Commerce and mercur?
Spree Commerce is written in Ruby and mercur in TypeScript. 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 mercur?
Choose Spree Commerce if you want the larger community (15,699 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose mercur if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.