head to head · open source
Spree Commerce vs Sylius
Spree Commerce has 15,699 GitHub stars, 5,301 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Sylius has 8,535 stars, 2,158 forks, 225 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Spree Commerce leads on adoption by 84% (15,699 vs 8,535 stars). Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause; Sylius is written in PHP under MIT. Spree Commerce has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, Sylius 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, ecommerce-platform, headless, headless-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 | Sylius | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 8.5K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| 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 Sylius if
- You want the Sylius feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Sylius 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 Sylius
Sylius is a headless, open source eCommerce platform built on top of PHP, the Symfony framework, and API Platform. It is distributed under the MIT license and has been developed for roughly fifteen years, with the current repository carrying about 8,500 stars, 2,100 forks, and 225 open issues. The project was originally created by Paweł Jędrzejewski and is maintained by a broad contributor base. It sits in the PHP and Symfony ecosystem, and it is positioned as a framework rather than a finished storefront: developers build the commerce application on top of it instead of configuring a hosted product.…
read the full Sylius overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Spree Commerce or Sylius more popular?
Spree Commerce has 15,699 GitHub stars and Sylius has 8,535. Spree Commerce has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spree Commerce and Sylius free?
Both are open source. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Sylius under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Spree Commerce and Sylius?
Spree Commerce is written in Ruby and Sylius in PHP. 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 Sylius?
Choose Spree Commerce if you want the larger community (15,699 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Sylius if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.