head to head · open source
Airbyte vs realtime
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars, 5,431 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. realtime has 7,673 stars, 479 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 191% (22,303 vs 7,673 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 | ★ 7.7K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 479 |
| 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
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 realtime
Supabase Realtime Send ephemeral messages, track and synchronize shared state, and listen to Postgres changes all over WebSockets. Examples · Request Features · Report Bugs Status This repository focuses on version 2 but you can still access the previous version's code and Docker image. For the latest Docker images go to The codebase is under heavy development and the documentation is constantly evolving. Give it a try and let us know what you think by creating an issue. Watch releases of this repo to get notified of updates. And give us a star if you like it! Overview What is this? This is a server built with…
read the full realtime overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or realtime more popular?
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars and realtime has 7,673. 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 (22,303 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.