head to head · open source
Spree Commerce vs mern-marketplace
Spree Commerce has 15,700 GitHub stars, 5,302 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mern-marketplace has 595 stars, 234 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Spree Commerce leads on adoption by 2,539% (15,700 vs 595 stars). Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause; mern-marketplace is written in JavaScript under MIT. Spree Commerce has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, mern-marketplace 39%. 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 | mern-marketplace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 595 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-03-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 234 |
| 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 mern-marketplace if
- You want the mern-marketplace feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mern-marketplace 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 mern-marketplace
MERN Marketplace 2.0 Looking for the first edition code? Check here An online marketplace application with seller accounts, product search and suggestions, shopping cart, order management, payment processing with Stripe, and live auction with Socket.io developed using React, Node, Express and MongoDB. Live Demo What you need to run this code 1. Node (13.12.0) 2. NPM (6.14.4) or Yarn (1.22.4) 3. MongoDB (4.2.0) 4. Stripe account with test data How to run this code 1. Make sure MongoDB is running on your system 2. Clone this repository 3. Update config/config.js with your test values for Stripe API keys and Stripe …
read the full mern-marketplace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Spree Commerce or mern-marketplace more popular?
Spree Commerce has 15,700 GitHub stars and mern-marketplace has 595. Spree Commerce has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spree Commerce and mern-marketplace free?
Both are open source. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and mern-marketplace under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Spree Commerce and mern-marketplace?
Spree Commerce is written in Ruby and mern-marketplace 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 mern-marketplace?
Choose Spree Commerce if you want the larger community (15,700 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose mern-marketplace if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.