head to head · open source
Airbyte vs flink-cdc
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars, 5,350 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flink-cdc has 6,475 stars, 2,196 forks, 119 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 241% (22,082 vs 6,475 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; flink-cdc is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, flink-cdc 34%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (change-data-capture, 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 | flink-cdc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 flink-cdc if
- You want the flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc
Flink CDC is an Apache 2.0 streaming data integration tool built on Apache Flink that moves real time and batch data between databases and downstream systems, and it is aimed at data engineers and platform teams who need change data capture pipelines without writing per source job code.
read the full flink-cdc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or flink-cdc more popular?
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars and flink-cdc has 6,475. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and flink-cdc free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and flink-cdc is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and flink-cdc?
Airbyte is written in Python and flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,082 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose flink-cdc if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.