Comparison

Mercurial vs Sapling

No leader: the top candidate Mercurial has only 0.10 confidence (low), below the 0.35 needed to declare a winner. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Mercurial54
Sapling48
Score
vioscaleAI score
Mercurial54 / 100low · 10%
Sapling48 / 100medium · 61%
Pricing
Free tier
Mercurial✓
Sapling✓
Model
Mercurialfree
Price level
Mercurialfree
Saplingfree
Transparent
Mercurial–
Sapling✓
Integrations
Count
Mercurial–
Sapling5
Reliability
Status page
Mercurial–
Sapling✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Mercurial–
Sapling7
Github stars
Mercurial–
Sapling7,032
Package downloads weekly
Mercurial86,972
Sapling–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Mercurial–
Sapling100
Release
Cadence days
Mercurial–
Sapling34
History
Mercurial–
Sapling20 items
License
Spdx
Mercurial–
SaplingGPL-2.0
Language
Primary
MercurialPython
SaplingRust
Market
Availability
Sapling–
Content
Faq
Mercurial4 items
Sapling5 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for version control. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Model
VCS model
MercurialDistributed
SaplingDistributed
Underlying VCS supported (Git / Mercurial / SVN / Perforce / multiple)
MercurialMercurial
SaplingGit
Deployment
Hosting
MercurialSelf-hosted only
SaplingSelf-hosted only
Review
Code review
MercurialNone (engine only)
SaplingPR / MR
Storage
Large-file / binary handling
Mercurial-
Sapling-
Scale
Monorepo scale (partial clone / sparse / VFS)
Mercurial-
Sapling✓
DevOps
Built-in CI
Mercurial✗
Sapling-
Access
Access control granularity
Mercurial-
Sapling-
Federation
Federation / decentralisation (ActivityPub / email)
Mercurial-
Sapling-
Licensing
Open-source core
MercurialOpen-source
SaplingOpen-source
Self-managed license model
MercurialFree
Sapling-
Integration
API surface (REST / GraphQL / webhooks)
MercurialCLI
SaplingCLI, webhooks
Enterprise
SSO / SAML / SCIM
Mercurial✗
Sapling-
Security
Signed commits / supply-chain (GPG / SSH / sigstore)
Mercurial-
Sapling-

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Mercurial

Mercurial is a distributed source control management system designed to efficiently handle large repositories with fast performance across teams.

Independently observed

Sapling

An open-source version control system built for Git compatibility and developer productivity that scales to millions of files. It provides an intuitive work-stacking model for code review and iteration, plus a virtual filesystem for performance optimization in large codebases.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Mercurial

FreeFree tier
as of verify ↗

Sapling

Open source
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Mercurial✗
Sapling✓
macOS
Mercurial✓
Sapling✓
Windows
Mercurial✓
Sapling✓
Linux
Mercurial✓
Sapling✓
CLI
Mercurial✓
Sapling✓
Deployment
Self-hosted
Mercurial✓
Sapling✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

Mercurial

Not documented yet.

Sapling

5 total
  • GitHub
  • VS Code
  • Git
  • Visual Studio
  • ReviewStack
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Mercurial or Sapling: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.