head to head · open source
Airbyte vs realtime
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars, 5,350 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. realtime has 7,634 stars, 467 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 189% (22,082 vs 7,634 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, realtime 6%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (change-data-capture), 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 | realtime | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 467 |
| 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 realtime if
- You want the realtime feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You evaluated both and realtime 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 realtime
Supabase Realtime is a server built with Elixir on the Phoenix Framework that pushes three kinds of realtime functionality to browser and server clients over WebSockets. It lives in the Supabase ecosystem, where it acts as the realtime layer alongside Postgres, and it is distributed as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. The project has been public for roughly seven years, carries 7,632 stars and 463 forks, and its topic list places it in the company of change data capture, CRDT, distributed systems, pubsub, and PostgreSQL tooling.
read the full realtime overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or realtime more popular?
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars and realtime has 7,634. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and realtime free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and realtime is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and realtime?
Airbyte is written in Python and realtime in Elixir. 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 realtime?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,082 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose realtime if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.