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Fossil vs Mercurial: catalog facts
Fossil	Mercurial
Free Free and open source under the BSD 2-clause licence.	Free Free and open source under the GPL-2.0-or-later licence.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hosted, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Single executable with nothing else to install Wiki, tickets, forum and chat built in	Full history in every clone, so most actions are local Approachable command set
Far smaller ecosystem and hosting options than Git Different workflow conventions to learn for Git users	Fewer hosting services and tools support it than Git Command line first; graphical clients are separate
Downloadable app, Self-hosted	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: BSD-2-Clause	License: GPL-2.0-or-later
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.