head to head · open source
Appwrite vs sbt
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars, 5,725 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sbt has 4,952 stars, 1,046 forks, 498 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Appwrite leads on adoption by 1,059% (57,400 vs 4,952 stars). Appwrite is written in PHP under BSD-3-Clause; sbt is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, sbt 21%. 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 | sbt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 sbt if
- You want the sbt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and sbt 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 sbt
sbt is an interactive build tool for Scala, Java, and more. It lives in the Scala ecosystem and is maintained under the Apache 2.0 license at scala sbt.org. The sbt/sbt repository hosts the build tool modules, while related code is split across sbt/io and sbt/zinc. It is categorized as Developer Tools / Build & Deployment.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or sbt more popular?
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars and sbt has 4,952. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and sbt free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and sbt under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and sbt?
Appwrite is written in PHP and sbt in Scala. 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 sbt?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,400 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose sbt if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.