Haraka
Fast, highly extensible, and event driven SMTP server.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 18 commits in the last 90 days, latest release v3.3.5 (Oct 2026).
Also an alternative to SendGrid.
At a glance
Haraka quick facts
- Health score
- 71/100 GOOD
- Stars
- 5,629
- Last commit
- today (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- v3.3.5, Oct 2026
- Licence
- MIT
Top alternatives to Haraka
Full rankings: SendGrid alternatives
In its own words
The project's README opens: "Haraka is a highly scalable Node.js SMTP server with a modular plugin architecture. It handles thousands of concurrent connections and delivers thousands of messages per second. Haraka and its plugins are written in asynchronous JavaScript, optimised for throughput and low latency."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
Haraka scores 71/100, #2 of 9 in Communication - Email - Mail Transfer Agents: 18 commits in the last 90 days earn 21.0 of 35 points, the latest release (v3.3.5, 13 days ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 5,629 stars add 15.0 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and no advertised Docker image leaves the final 10 unclaimed. That places it in the good band (70 and above). The biggest shortfall is commit activity, worth 14.0 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity biggest shortfall 21.0 / 35
18 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
v3.3.5 released 13 days ago
- Stars 15.0 / 20
5.6k stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 0.0 / 10
No Docker support advertised
Commit activity
- 18
- Last 90 days
- 92
- Last 12 months
- today
- Last push
Ranked #2 of 9 tools in Communication - Email - Mail Transfer Agents by health , between OpenSMTPD (#1) and DragonFly (#3) .
Details
| Licence | MIT |
| Platforms | Nodejs |
| Latest release | v3.3.5 · 13 days ago |
| Stars | 5,629 |
| Open issues | 0 |
| Docker | Not advertised |
| Repository | haraka/Haraka ↗ |
Haraka vs its top 4 alternatives
Active tools that share a comparison page or a category with Haraka (Communication - Email - Mail Transfer Agents), scored on the same five terms.
| Tool | Health | Stars | Licence | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenSMTPD | 81 | 586 | ISC | 2 months ago |
| Maddy Mail Server | 80 | 6.1k | GPL-3.0 | today |
| Haraka (this tool) | 71 | 5.6k | MIT | today |
| Postal | 65 | 17k | MIT | today |
| DragonFly | 21 | 266 | BSD-3-Clause | 2 months ago |
Haraka: common questions
What does Haraka replace?
Repoly lists Haraka as an open-source alternative to SendGrid. Each comparison page ranks every alternative by the same health score, so you can see where Haraka stands against the others.
Is Haraka still maintained?
Haraka had 18 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was today; the latest tagged release, v3.3.5, is from 13 days ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.