head to head · open source
Appwrite vs captain
Appwrite has 57,843 GitHub stars, 5,827 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. captain has 775 stars, 48 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Appwrite leads on adoption by 7,364% (57,843 vs 775 stars). Appwrite is written in TypeScript under BSD-3-Clause; captain is written in Go under MIT. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, captain 6%. Appwrite was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (docker), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | captain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 58K | ★ 775 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 48 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Appwrite if
- You weight community size — 58K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick captain if
- You want the captain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and captain fits your workflow better
About Appwrite
Appwrite Appwrite is an open source, all in one development platform. Use built in backend infrastructure and web hosting, all from a single place. English 简体中文 Appwrite is an open source development platform for building web, mobile, and AI applications. It brings together backend infrastructure and web hosting in one place, so teams can build, ship, and scale without stitching together a fragmented stack. Appwrite is available as a managed cloud platform and can also be self hosted on infrastructure you control. With Appwrite, you can add authentication, databases, storage, functions, messaging, realtime…
read the full Appwrite overview →
About captain
Introduction Captain Convert your Git workflow to Docker containers ready for Continuous Delivery Define your workflow in the captain.yaml and use captain to your Continuous Delivery service to create containers for each commit, test them and push them to your registry only when tests passes. Use captain build to build your Dockerfile(s) of your repository. If your repository has local changes the containers will only be tagged as latest , otherwise the containers will be tagged as latest , COMMIT ID & BRANCH NAME . Now your Git commit tree is reproduced in your local docker repository. Use captain test to run…
read the full captain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or captain more popular?
Appwrite has 57,843 GitHub stars and captain has 775. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and captain free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and captain under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and captain?
Appwrite is written in TypeScript and captain 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, Appwrite or captain?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,843 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose captain if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.