head to head · open source
Airbyte vs steampipe
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars, 5,431 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. steampipe has 7,993 stars, 347 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Airbyte leads on adoption by 179% (22,303 vs 7,993 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 347 |
| 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
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 steampipe
select from cloud; Steampipe is the zero ETL way to query APIs and services. Use it to expose data sources to SQL. SQL . It's been the data access standard for decades. Live data . Query APIs in real time. Speed . Query APIs faster than you ever thought possible. Concurrency . Query many data sources in parallel. Single binary . Use it locally, deploy it in CI/CD pipelines. Demo time! Documentation See the documentation for: Running queries Managing Steampipe CLI commands Integrations Developing plugins Install Steampipe Install Steampipe from the downloads page: Install a plugin for your favorite service (e.g…
read the full steampipe overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or steampipe more popular?
Airbyte has 22,303 GitHub stars and steampipe has 7,993. 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 (22,303 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.