head to head · open source
Appwrite vs tau
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars, 5,725 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tau has 5,137 stars, 210 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Appwrite leads on adoption by 1,017% (57,400 vs 5,137 stars). Appwrite is written in PHP under BSD-3-Clause; tau is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, tau 4%. 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 | tau | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 210 |
| 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 tau if
- You want the tau feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tau 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 tau
Tau is a fullstack workspace for humans and machines, listed under Developer Tools / Build & Deployment. It is written in Go, licensed under BSD 3 Clause, and its topics place it in the cloud native developer tools ecosystem, including serverless, PaaS, distributed systems, WebAssembly, CDN, AI, 5G, P2P, and cloud computing. The README describes a development environment, an application build step, and a deploy and run step.
More in Developer Tools
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Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or tau more popular?
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars and tau has 5,137. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and tau free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and tau under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and tau?
Appwrite is written in PHP and tau 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 tau?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,400 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose tau if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.