head to head · open source
Appwrite vs trunk
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars, 5,725 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trunk has 4,391 stars, 322 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Appwrite leads on adoption by 1,207% (57,400 vs 4,391 stars). Appwrite is written in PHP under BSD-3-Clause; trunk is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, trunk 7%. 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 | trunk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 322 |
| 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 trunk if
- You want the trunk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and trunk 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 trunk
Trunk is a build and bundling tool for Rust applications that target WebAssembly for the web. It lives in the Rust and WebAssembly ecosystem, and the README describes it as a WASM web application bundler for Rust. The project uses a source HTML file as the entry point for building and bundling WASM, JavaScript snippets, and assets such as images, CSS, SCSS, and HTML.
read the full trunk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or trunk more popular?
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars and trunk has 4,391. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and trunk free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and trunk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and trunk?
Appwrite is written in PHP and trunk in Rust. 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 trunk?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,400 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose trunk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.