head to head · open source
Apache Pinot vs bigfunctions
Apache Pinot has 6,139 GitHub stars, 1,509 forks, 1,403 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bigfunctions has 759 stars, 70 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 27 days ago. Apache Pinot leads on adoption by 709% (6,139 vs 759 stars). Apache Pinot is written in Java under Apache-2.0; bigfunctions is written in Python under MIT. Apache Pinot has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, bigfunctions 9%. Apache Pinot 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 | bigfunctions | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.1K | ★ 759 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 70 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Apache Pinot if
- You weight community size — 6.1K 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 bigfunctions if
- You want the bigfunctions feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and bigfunctions fits your workflow better
About Apache Pinot
Apache Pinot is a real time distributed OLAP datastore built to deliver scalable real time analytics at low latency. It lives in the Java ecosystem, is licensed under Apache 2.0, and was originally built by engineers at LinkedIn and Uber. The project ingests from batch data sources such as Hadoop HDFS, Amazon S3, Azure ADLS, and Google Cloud Storage, as well as from stream data sources such as Apache Kafka. It is designed to scale up and out with no upper bound, and its performance stays constant based on the size of the cluster and an expected query per second threshold.
read the full Apache Pinot overview →
About bigfunctions
BigFunctions is an open source Python framework, released under the MIT licence, for building a governed catalog of BigQuery functions — packaged with a community library of more than 150 functions that can be called directly or redeployed — and it is aimed at data engineers, analysts, and teams working inside Google BigQuery.
read the full bigfunctions overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache Pinot or bigfunctions more popular?
Apache Pinot has 6,139 GitHub stars and bigfunctions has 759. Apache Pinot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache Pinot and bigfunctions free?
Both are open source. Apache Pinot is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bigfunctions under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Apache Pinot and bigfunctions?
Apache Pinot is written in Java and bigfunctions in Python. 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 bigfunctions?
Choose Apache Pinot if you want the larger community (6,139 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bigfunctions if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.