head to head · open source
Airbyte vs flink-cdc
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars, 5,431 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flink-cdc has 6,493 stars, 2,205 forks, 119 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 243% (22,303 vs 6,493 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 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
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 flink-cdc
Flink CDC is a distributed data integration tool for real time data and batch data, built on top of Apache Flink. It prioritizes efficient end to end data integration and offers enhanced functionalities such as full database synchronization, sharding table synchronization, schema evolution and data transformation. API Layers Flink CDC provides three API layers for different usage scenarios: 1. YAML API (Pipeline API) The YAML API provides a declarative, zero code approach to define data pipelines. Users describe the source, sink, routing, transformation, and schema evolution rules in a YAML file and submit it…
read the full flink-cdc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or flink-cdc more popular?
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars and flink-cdc has 6,493. 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 (22,303 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.