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Mercurial vs Fossil: catalog facts
Mercurial	Fossil
Free Free and open source under the GPL-2.0-or-later licence.	Free Free and open source under the BSD 2-clause licence.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hosted, Command line
Full history in every clone, so most actions are local Approachable command set	Single executable with nothing else to install Wiki, tickets, forum and chat built in
Fewer hosting services and tools support it than Git Command line first; graphical clients are separate	Far smaller ecosystem and hosting options than Git Different workflow conventions to learn for Git users
Downloadable app	Downloadable app, Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License: GPL-2.0-or-later	License: BSD-2-Clause
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.