head to head · open source
Airbyte vs conduit
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars, 5,350 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conduit has 611 stars, 63 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 3,514% (22,082 vs 611 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; conduit is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, conduit 10%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (data-engineering, data-integration, data-pipeline, 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 | conduit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 611 |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 63 |
| 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 conduit if
- You want the conduit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and conduit fits your workflow better
About Airbyte
Airbyte open source data movement project. It lives in data engineering and data integration ecosystem. It moves data from APIs, databases, and files into warehouses, data lakes, and AI applications. It supports ELT and ETL pipelines. It also supports AI agents needing business data.
read the full Airbyte overview →
About conduit
Conduit is an Apache 2.0 licenced data streaming tool written in Go that moves records between production data stores in real time, and it is aimed at data engineers who want Kafka Connect style pipelines without a JVM in the stack.
read the full conduit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or conduit more popular?
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars and conduit has 611. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and conduit free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and conduit is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and conduit?
Airbyte is written in Python and conduit 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 conduit?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,082 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose conduit if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.