head to head · open source
Spree Commerce vs WooCommerce
Spree Commerce has 15,806 GitHub stars, 5,319 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WooCommerce has 10,574 stars, 10,657 forks, 1,638 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Spree Commerce leads on adoption by 49% (15,806 vs 10,574 stars). Spree Commerce is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause; WooCommerce is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. Spree Commerce has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, WooCommerce 101%. WooCommerce was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ecommerce, ecommerce-platform), 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 | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 11K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 WooCommerce if
- You want the WooCommerce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce
WooCommerce Monorepo Welcome to the WooCommerce monorepo on GitHub. Here you can find all of the plugins, packages, and tools used in the development of the core WooCommerce plugin as well as WooCommerce extensions. You can browse the source, look at open issues, contribute code, and keep track of ongoing development. We recommend all developers follow the WooCommerce development blog to stay up to date with everything happening in the project. You can also follow @DevelopWoo on X (formerly Twitter) for the latest development updates. Getting Started To get up and running within the WooCommerce Monorepo, you…
read the full WooCommerce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Spree Commerce or WooCommerce more popular?
Spree Commerce has 15,806 GitHub stars and WooCommerce has 10,574. Spree Commerce has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spree Commerce and WooCommerce free?
Both are open source. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and WooCommerce under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Spree Commerce and WooCommerce?
Spree Commerce is written in Ruby and WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce?
Choose Spree Commerce if you want the larger community (15,806 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose WooCommerce if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.