head to head · open source
Appwrite vs swiftwave
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars, 5,725 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swiftwave has 893 stars, 67 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Appwrite leads on adoption by 6,328% (57,400 vs 893 stars). Appwrite is written in PHP under BSD-3-Clause; swiftwave is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, swiftwave 8%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Appwrite | swiftwave | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 893 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 67 |
| 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 swiftwave if
- You want the swiftwave feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and swiftwave 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 swiftwave
Swiftwave is a self hosted, lightweight platform as a service written in Go that lets developers deploy and manage applications on their own servers, positioned as an open source alternative to Heroku, Netlify, and Render.
read the full swiftwave overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More Build & Deployment projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Build & Deployment field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or swiftwave more popular?
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars and swiftwave has 893. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and swiftwave free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and swiftwave under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and swiftwave?
Appwrite is written in PHP and swiftwave 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 swiftwave?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,400 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose swiftwave if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.