Shopware vs thirty bees
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted e-commerce platforms options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Shopware
Flexible open-source commerce for growing brands
VS
thirty bees
Stable e-commerce platform forked from PrestaShop
| Feature | Shopware | thirty bees |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 88 · Excellent | 81 · Excellent |
| Category | E-commerce Platforms | E-commerce Platforms |
| License | MIT | OSL-3.0 |
| Language | PHP | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | bare-metal, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,430 | ★ 767 |
| First released | 2010 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Shopify, Magento | Shopify |
What are Shopware and thirty bees?
Shopware
Shopware is an open-source e-commerce platform from Germany built with Symfony and Vue.js. The community edition offers a modern admin, headless API, and a rich extension ecosystem.
- Modern Vue.js admin
- Headless API capabilities
- Rule-based merchandising
- Strong extension store
thirty bees
thirty bees is an open-source e-commerce platform forked from PrestaShop with a focus on stability, performance, and merchant-friendly features. It runs traditional online stores and is compatible with many PrestaShop modules.
- PrestaShop module compatibility
- Stability focus
- Multi-store support
- Theme system
Shopware vs thirty bees: key differences
Both projects are written in PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for Shopware versus OSL-3.0 for thirty bees. Thirty bees is the lighter option, starting around 1,024 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Shopware. Shopware is the more established project (first released 2010), while thirty bees arrived in 2017. Shopware has the considerably larger community, at 3,430 GitHub stars versus 767.
Why pick each one
Choose Shopware if…
- Polished merchant experience
- Powerful B2B suite available
Watch out for
- Heavy resource needs
- Complex for small shops
Choose thirty bees if…
- Released under the OSL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in PHP
Watch out for
- Smaller community
- Slower release cadence
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopware or thirty bees better?
Neither is universally better. Shopware has the larger community, while thirty bees is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Shopware and thirty bees free and open-source?
Yes. Shopware is licensed under MIT and thirty bees under OSL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Shopware and thirty bees with Docker?
Shopware: yes. thirty bees: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Shopware or thirty bees?
thirty bees has the smaller minimum footprint at 1,024 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Shopware. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.