head to head · open source
Airbyte vs Addax
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars, 5,431 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Addax has 1,453 stars, 342 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 1,435% (22,303 vs 1,453 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; Addax is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, Addax 24%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (data-integration, etl), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Airbyte | Addax | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 342 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Airbyte if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Addax if
- You want the Addax feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Addax fits your workflow better
About Airbyte
Open source data movement for ELT pipelines and AI agents — from APIs, databases & files to warehouses, lakes, and AI applications We believe that only an open source solution to data movement can cover the long tail of data sources while empowering data engineers to customize existing connectors. Our ultimate vision is to help you move data from any source to any destination — whether that destination is a data warehouse, a data lake, or an AI agent. Airbyte provides a catalog of 600+ connectors for APIs, databases, data warehouses, data lakes, and AI applications. Screenshot taken from Airbyte Cloud . Pick the…
read the full Airbyte overview →
About Addax
Addax A versatile open source ETL tool Addax is an extensible ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tool supporting over 20 SQL/NoSQL data sources, forked from Alibaba's DataX , which has been frozen since 2023 — Addax is its actively maintained successor. It provides a growing ecosystem of plugins and offers easy to follow configuration for data integrations. 简体中文 🚀 Features Supports 20+ SQL and NoSQL data sources, and easily extendable for more. Configurable via simple JSON based job descriptions. Actively maintained with improved architecture and added functionality compared to DataX. Docker images for quick…
read the full Addax overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or Addax more popular?
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars and Addax has 1,453. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and Addax free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and Addax is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and Addax?
Airbyte is written in Python and Addax in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Airbyte or Addax?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,303 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Addax if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.