head to head · open source
Airbyte vs duckle
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars, 5,350 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. duckle has 1,307 stars, 101 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 1,590% (22,082 vs 1,307 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; duckle is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, duckle 8%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (data-engineering, data-integration, data-pipeline, elt), 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 | duckle | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 101 |
| 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 duckle if
- You want the duckle feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and duckle 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 duckle
Duckle is an open source ETL/ELT platform for data engineering and data integration teams. It lives in the DuckDB ecosystem and lets teams author pipelines on a visual canvas, in Python, or in SQL, then run them on their own servers or cloud accounts. The project is written in Rust and licensed under Apache 2.0.
read the full duckle overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or duckle more popular?
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars and duckle has 1,307. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and duckle free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and duckle is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and duckle?
Airbyte is written in Python and duckle in Rust. 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 duckle?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,082 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose duckle if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.