osem vs pretalx

Both are self-hosted conference management projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

pretalx scores 74 against osem's 32, putting it clearly ahead on the strength of a higher commit volume and more recent releases. That measures project health, not feature fit — osem may still be the right choice if it does what you need.

	osem	pretalx
Health score	32/100	74/100
Commits (11 mo)	178	1518
Commits (last 3 mo)	41	420
Stars	927	946
Latest release	24 May 2016	8 Jul 2026
Licence	MIT	Apache-2.0
Built with	Ruby, Docker	Python
Typical RAM	1 GB	1 GB

osem

Event management tailored to free Software conferences.

32/100

At risk

Little to no recent activity. Treat as unmaintained until proven otherwise.

Maintenance 16/40

Releases 1/25

Community 7/20

Momentum 8/15

Commit activity more than 41% of tracked projects; popularity more than 33%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

pretalx

Web-based event management, including running a Call for Papers, reviewing submissions, and scheduling talks. Exports and imports for various related tools.

74/100

Healthy

Actively maintained with regular releases.

Maintenance 34/40

Releases 21/25

Community 7/20

Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 86% of tracked projects; popularity more than 34%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted conference management.