head to head · open source
Apache Pinot vs dlt
Apache Pinot has 6,139 GitHub stars, 1,509 forks, 1,403 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dlt has 5,871 stars, 605 forks, 434 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache Pinot leads on adoption by 5% (6,139 vs 5,871 stars). Apache Pinot is written in Java under Apache-2.0; dlt is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Apache Pinot has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, dlt 10%. 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 | dlt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.1K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 605 |
| 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 dlt if
- You want the dlt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dlt 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 dlt
dlt (data load tool) is an open source Python library, licensed under Apache 2.0, that automates tedious data loading by moving data from messy, often unstructured sources into well structured, typed datasets, and it is built for Python developers and data engineers who want to load data without adopting a platform.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache Pinot or dlt more popular?
Apache Pinot has 6,139 GitHub stars and dlt has 5,871. Apache Pinot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache Pinot and dlt free?
Both are open source. Apache Pinot is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dlt under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Apache Pinot and dlt?
Apache Pinot is written in Java and dlt 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 dlt?
Choose Apache Pinot if you want the larger community (6,139 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dlt if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.