head to head · open source
Spree Commerce vs thelia
Spree Commerce has 15,806 GitHub stars, 5,319 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thelia has 882 stars, 319 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Spree Commerce leads on adoption by 1,692% (15,806 vs 882 stars). Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause; thelia is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. Spree Commerce has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, thelia 36%. Spree Commerce was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (e-commerce, 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 | thelia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 882 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 319 |
| 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 thelia if
- You want the thelia feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and thelia 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 thelia
Thelia This is the development repository of Thelia, the open source e commerce framework. Work on Thelia itself here. To create a shop, use the project skeleton instead: thelia/thelia project. About Thelia is an open source framework for building online stores and managing web content. Version 3 runs on: PHP 8.3, 8.4 or 8.5 Symfony 7.4 LTS API Platform 4.3 (standalone) Propel ORM A Twig front office (the Flexy theme) and a Twig back office (the default twig theme) Lexik JWT for API authentication The back office and front office are built with Twig, Symfony UX (Stimulus, Twig Components and Live Components) and…
read the full thelia overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Spree Commerce or thelia more popular?
Spree Commerce has 15,806 GitHub stars and thelia has 882. Spree Commerce has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spree Commerce and thelia free?
Both are open source. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and thelia under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Spree Commerce and thelia?
Spree Commerce is written in Ruby and thelia 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 thelia?
Choose Spree Commerce if you want the larger community (15,806 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose thelia if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.