head to head · open source
Apache Pinot vs lakeFS
Apache Pinot has 6,149 GitHub stars, 1,522 forks, 1,403 open issues and last shipped today. lakeFS has 5,552 stars, 480 forks, 443 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache Pinot leads on adoption by 11% (6,149 vs 5,552 stars). Apache Pinot is written in Java under Apache-2.0; lakeFS is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. Apache Pinot has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, lakeFS 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 | lakeFS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.1K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 480 |
| 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 lakeFS if
- You want the lakeFS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and lakeFS 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 lakeFS
lakeFS is an open source data version control tool — commonly described as Git for data — that turns object storage into a versioned, Git like repository, and it is built for data engineers, analytics engineers, and data scientists who need repeatable, atomic, and auditable data lake operations.
read the full lakeFS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache Pinot or lakeFS more popular?
Apache Pinot has 6,149 GitHub stars and lakeFS has 5,552. Apache Pinot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache Pinot and lakeFS free?
Both are open source. Apache Pinot is licensed under Apache-2.0, and lakeFS has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Apache Pinot and lakeFS?
Apache Pinot is written in Java and lakeFS 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 lakeFS?
Choose Apache Pinot if you want the larger community (6,149 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lakeFS if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.