head to head · open source
Airbyte vs CloudQuery
Airbyte has 22,297 GitHub stars, 5,429 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CloudQuery has 6,550 stars, 567 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Airbyte leads on adoption by 240% (22,297 vs 6,550 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; CloudQuery is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, CloudQuery 9%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 7 topic tags (bigquery, data, data-analysis, data-collection), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Airbyte | CloudQuery | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Custom / other | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 567 |
| 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 CloudQuery if
- You want the CloudQuery feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and CloudQuery 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 CloudQuery
CloudOps, without the chaos CloudQuery is a cloud asset inventory built for platform teams. Sync your cloud infrastructure metadata into your data warehouse, powering insights and automation. Unify data and provide context across AWS, Azure, GCP, and 70+ cloud and SaaS sources such as Wiz, Finout, and GitHub. Installation Check out the quickstart guide for install guides for Linux and Windows and for step by step instructions on completing your first sync with CloudQuery. Why CloudQuery? Specialized plugin coverage Support for cloud infrastructure, security, and FinOps sources with normalization, rate limit…
read the full CloudQuery overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Engineering & Integration projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Engineering & Integration field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or CloudQuery more popular?
Airbyte has 22,297 GitHub stars and CloudQuery has 6,550. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and CloudQuery free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and CloudQuery is licensed under MPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and CloudQuery?
Airbyte is written in Python and CloudQuery in Go. 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 CloudQuery?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,297 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose CloudQuery if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.