head to head · open source
Appwrite vs cake
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars, 5,725 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cake has 4,191 stars, 778 forks, 247 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Appwrite leads on adoption by 1,270% (57,400 vs 4,191 stars). Appwrite is written in PHP under BSD-3-Clause; cake is written in C# under MIT. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, cake 19%. Appwrite 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
| Appwrite | cake | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 4.2K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 778 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Appwrite if
- You weight community size — 57K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cake if
- You want the cake feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and cake fits your workflow better
About Appwrite
Appwrite is an open source backend platform that consolidates infrastructure services—authentication, databases, storage, functions, messaging, hosting, and real time capabilities—into a single, unified system. It runs as a self hosted service or via a managed cloud offering (Appwrite Cloud), targeting developers who want to avoid assembling and maintaining disparate backend tools.
read the full Appwrite overview →
About cake
Cake, called C Make, is cross platform build automation system. It lives in .NET ecosystem. It lets developers write build logic in C . That logic can compile code, copy files and folders, run unit tests, compress files, build NuGet packages. Project is MIT licensed C software. It provides Cake .NET Tool, Cake Frosting, Cake SDK packages.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or cake more popular?
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars and cake has 4,191. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and cake free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and cake under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and cake?
Appwrite is written in PHP and cake in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Appwrite or cake?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,400 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose cake if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.