head to head · open source
SuiteCRM vs EspoCRM
SuiteCRM has 5,838 GitHub stars, 2,435 forks, 1,382 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. EspoCRM has 3,541 stars, 1,017 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SuiteCRM leads on adoption by 65% (5,838 vs 3,541 stars). SuiteCRM is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; EspoCRM is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. SuiteCRM has attracted 42% as many forks as stars, EspoCRM 29%. EspoCRM was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (contacts, crm, documents, leads), 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
| SuiteCRM | EspoCRM | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.8K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SuiteCRM if
- You weight community size — 5.8K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick EspoCRM if
- You want the EspoCRM feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and EspoCRM fits your workflow better
About SuiteCRM
SuiteCRM 7.15.2 Website Demo Maintainers Contributors Community Forum Partners Extensions Directory Translations SuiteCRM is the award winning open source, enterprise ready Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software application. Our vision is to be the most adopted open source enterprise CRM in the world, giving users full control of their data and freedom to own and customise their business solution. SuiteCRM 7 is a mature and stable CRM with a large community and regular releases containing new features, security patches and bug fixes from both our community and the SuiteCRM team. You may also be…
read the full SuiteCRM overview →
About EspoCRM
EspoCRM EspoCRM is a free, open source CRM platform designed to help organizations build and maintain strong customer relationships. It provides a wide range of tools to store, organize, and manage leads, contacts, sales opportunities, marketing campaigns, support cases, and more – all business information in a simple and intuitive interface. Architecture EspoCRM is a web application with a frontend designed as a single page application and a REST API backend written in PHP. Demo You can try the CRM on an online demo. Requirements PHP 8.3 8.5; MySQL 8.0 (and later), or MariaDB 10.3 (and later); PostgreSQL 15…
read the full EspoCRM overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SuiteCRM or EspoCRM more popular?
SuiteCRM has 5,838 GitHub stars and EspoCRM has 3,541. SuiteCRM has the larger community by that measure.
Are SuiteCRM and EspoCRM free?
Both are open source. SuiteCRM is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and EspoCRM under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SuiteCRM and EspoCRM?
SuiteCRM is written in PHP and EspoCRM 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, SuiteCRM or EspoCRM?
Choose SuiteCRM if you want the larger community (5,838 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose EspoCRM if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.