head to head · open source
drawDB vs Beekeeper Studio
drawDB has 40,237 GitHub stars, 3,352 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Beekeeper Studio has 23,841 stars, 1,665 forks, 1,168 open issues and last shipped yesterday. drawDB leads on adoption by 69% (40,237 vs 23,841 stars). drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; Beekeeper Studio is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. drawDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Beekeeper Studio 7%. Beekeeper Studio was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (mariadb), 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.
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Side by side
| drawDB | Beekeeper Studio | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 24K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick drawDB if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Beekeeper Studio if
- You want the Beekeeper Studio feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Beekeeper Studio fits your workflow better
About drawDB
drawDB Free, simple, and intuitive database schema editor and SQL generator. DrawDB is a robust and user friendly database entity relationship diagram (ERD) editor right in your browser. Build diagrams with a few clicks, export and import SQL scripts, generate migrations, customize your editor, and more without creating an account. See the full set of features on here. Getting Started Local Development Build Docker Build If you want to enable sharing, set up the server and environment variables according to .env.sample . This is optional unless you need to share files. Contributing Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for…
read the full drawDB overview →
About Beekeeper Studio
🌐 EN PT BR ES DE FR EL JA IT KO ID SW Beekeeper Studio Beekeeper Studio is a cross platform SQL editor and database manager available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Download Beekeeper Studio We publish binaries for MacOS, Windows, and Linux. Beekeeper Studio is free to download and provides a lot of features for free, no sign up, registration, or credit card required. The app provides some premium features for a reasonable cost license fee. Learn more here Most of the code in this repo is open source under the GPLv3 license. Paid features are also in this repository under a commercial source available license. We…
read the full Beekeeper Studio overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is drawDB or Beekeeper Studio more popular?
drawDB has 40,237 GitHub stars and Beekeeper Studio has 23,841. drawDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are drawDB and Beekeeper Studio free?
Both are open source. drawDB is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Beekeeper Studio has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between drawDB and Beekeeper Studio?
drawDB is written in JavaScript and Beekeeper Studio in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, drawDB or Beekeeper Studio?
Choose drawDB if you want the larger community (40,237 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Beekeeper Studio if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.