head to head · open source
Airbyte vs Elementary Data
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars, 5,431 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Elementary Data has 2,429 stars, 239 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. Airbyte leads on adoption by 818% (22,303 vs 2,429 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; Elementary Data is written in HTML under Apache-2.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, Elementary Data 10%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (bigquery, data-analysis, data-pipeline), 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 | Elementary Data | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 239 |
| 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 Elementary Data if
- You want the Elementary Data feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and Elementary Data 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 Elementary Data
Elementary OSS: dbt native data observability Docs » Join the Elementary Community » ⭐️ Star the repo Built by the Elementary team, helping you deliver trusted data in the AI era. Elementary OSS is the open source CLI for dbt native data observability. It works with the Elementary dbt package to generate the basic Elementary observability report and send alerts to Slack and Microsoft Teams. For teams that need data reliability at scale, we offer Elementary Cloud , a full Data & AI Control Plane with automated ML monitoring, column level lineage from source to BI, a built in catalog, and AI agents that scale…
read the full Elementary Data overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or Elementary Data more popular?
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars and Elementary Data has 2,429. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and Elementary Data free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and Elementary Data is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and Elementary Data?
Airbyte is written in Python and Elementary Data in HTML. 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 Elementary Data?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,303 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Elementary Data if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.