head to head · open source
Apache Pinot vs arc
Apache Pinot has 6,171 GitHub stars, 1,529 forks, 1,403 open issues and last shipped yesterday. arc has 689 stars, 57 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache Pinot leads on adoption by 796% (6,171 vs 689 stars). Apache Pinot is written in Java under Apache-2.0; arc is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Apache Pinot has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, arc 8%. arc was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Apache Pinot | arc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.2K | ★ 689 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 57 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Apache Pinot if
- You weight community size — 6.2K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick arc if
- You want the arc 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 arc fits your workflow better
About Apache Pinot
What is Apache Pinot? Features When should I use Pinot? Contributing to Pinot Apache Pinot YouTube Channel Building Pinot Deploying Pinot to Kubernetes Join the Community Documentation License What is Apache Pinot? Apache Pinot is a real time distributed OLAP datastore, built to deliver scalable real time analytics with low latency. It can ingest from batch data sources (such as Hadoop HDFS, Amazon S3, Azure ADLS, Google Cloud Storage) as well as stream data sources (such as Apache Kafka). Pinot was built by engineers at LinkedIn and Uber and is designed to scale up and out with no upper bound. Performance…
read the full Apache Pinot overview →
About arc
Arc Open, SQL native time series database for telemetry you need to keep. Arc ingests 34M+ records/sec, stores data as standard Parquet on infrastructure you own, and lets you query recent and historical data together. InfluxDB Line Protocol and Telegraf compatible. Single binary. AGPL 3.0. Prefer a UI? Arc Launchpad is a self hosted web console for the Arc instances you run — SQL console, schema explorer, logs, monitoring, and management for tokens, retention, alerts, continuous queries, and MQTT ingestion. Deploy it alongside Arc with Docker Compose. Docs. Prefer a terminal? arcli is the Arc command line —…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache Pinot or arc more popular?
Apache Pinot has 6,171 GitHub stars and arc has 689. Apache Pinot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache Pinot and arc free?
Both are open source. Apache Pinot is licensed under Apache-2.0 and arc under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Apache Pinot and arc?
Apache Pinot is written in Java and arc 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, Apache Pinot or arc?
Choose Apache Pinot if you want the larger community (6,171 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose arc if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.