head to head · open source
Apache Pinot vs ZeroFS
Apache Pinot has 6,149 GitHub stars, 1,522 forks, 1,403 open issues and last shipped today. ZeroFS has 3,111 stars, 119 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped today. Apache Pinot leads on adoption by 98% (6,149 vs 3,111 stars). Apache Pinot is written in Java under Apache-2.0; ZeroFS is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Apache Pinot has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, ZeroFS 4%. 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 | ZeroFS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.1K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 119 |
| 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 ZeroFS if
- You want the ZeroFS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and ZeroFS 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 ZeroFS
ZeroFS is a log structured filesystem written in Rust that presents S3 compatible buckets as POSIX filesystems over NFS and 9P, and as raw block devices over NBD, for teams that want object storage to behave like ordinary local storage.
read the full ZeroFS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache Pinot or ZeroFS more popular?
Apache Pinot has 6,149 GitHub stars and ZeroFS has 3,111. Apache Pinot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache Pinot and ZeroFS free?
Both are open source. Apache Pinot is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ZeroFS under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Apache Pinot and ZeroFS?
Apache Pinot is written in Java and ZeroFS in Rust. 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 ZeroFS?
Choose Apache Pinot if you want the larger community (6,149 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ZeroFS if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.