head to head · open source
Spree Commerce vs reaction
Spree Commerce has 15,806 GitHub stars, 5,319 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. reaction has 12,400 stars, 2,169 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. Spree Commerce leads on adoption by 27% (15,806 vs 12,400 stars). Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause; reaction is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. Spree Commerce has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, reaction 17%. Spree Commerce was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (e-commerce, ecommerce, ecommerce-platform, headless), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Spree Commerce | reaction | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 12K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-03-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 reaction if
- You want the reaction feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and reaction fits your workflow better
About Spree Commerce
Website · Free Sandbox · Next.js Storefront · Documentation · API · Roadmap · Discord Open source headless eCommerce platform with a complete REST API, TypeScript SDK, and a production ready Next.js storefront. BSD 3 Clause licensed — keep full ownership of your code, data, and infrastructure. Everything you need to launch cross border storefronts, B2B wholesale, or a custom commerce backend. Getting Started The fastest way to try Spree is to create a free sandbox — a hosted Spree store with the Admin Dashboard and storefront, nothing to install. To run Spree locally instead, copy and paste the following command…
read the full Spree Commerce overview →
About reaction
Mailchimp Open Commerce (formerly Reaction Commerce) Open Commerce Website Twitter Documentation Discord Discussions Mailchimp Open Commerce is an API first, headless commerce platform built using Node.js, MongoDB, and GraphQL. It plays nicely with npm, Docker and Kubernetes. Features Fast Returns data in split seconds, and faster queries mean faster web pages Proven Open Commerce fuels sites doing 10's of thousands of orders per day with 100's of thousands of products Composable A flexible plugin system allows you to pick and choose which integrations work best for you Multi tenant Host multiple shops in the…
read the full reaction overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More E-commerce Platforms projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the E-commerce Platforms field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Spree Commerce or reaction more popular?
Spree Commerce has 15,806 GitHub stars and reaction has 12,400. Spree Commerce has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spree Commerce and reaction free?
Both are open source. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and reaction under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Spree Commerce and reaction?
Spree Commerce is written in Ruby and reaction 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 reaction?
Choose Spree Commerce if you want the larger community (15,806 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose reaction if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.