head to head · open source
Airbyte vs steampipe
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars, 5,350 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. steampipe has 7,955 stars, 341 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 178% (22,082 vs 7,955 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, steampipe 4%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (etl), 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 | steampipe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 8.0K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 341 |
| 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 steampipe if
- You want the steampipe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and steampipe 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 steampipe
Steampipe is an AGPL 3.0, Go based zero ETL tool that maps APIs and services to SQL tables, letting anyone who already writes SQL — cloud engineers, DevSecOps and security teams, data engineers — query live data from AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub and Kubernetes without building a pipeline or running a database.
read the full steampipe overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or steampipe more popular?
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars and steampipe has 7,955. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and steampipe free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and steampipe is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and steampipe?
Airbyte is written in Python and steampipe in Go. 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 steampipe?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,082 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose steampipe if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.