head to head · open source
Appwrite vs Bear
Appwrite has 57,418 GitHub stars, 5,732 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bear has 6,493 stars, 369 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Appwrite leads on adoption by 784% (57,418 vs 6,493 stars). Appwrite is written in PHP under BSD-3-Clause; Bear is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Bear 6%. 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 | Bear | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 369 |
| 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 Bear if
- You want the Bear feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Bear 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 Bear
Bear is a GPL 3.0, Rust based command line tool that produces a compile commands.json compilation database for any C or C++ build by recording the compiler invocations that run during it, and it is aimed at developers, code explorers, and CI jobs whose build systems cannot emit that database on their own.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or Bear more popular?
Appwrite has 57,418 GitHub stars and Bear has 6,493. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and Bear free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Bear under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and Bear?
Appwrite is written in PHP and Bear 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 Bear?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,418 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Bear if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.