head to head · open source
cayley vs Bytebase
cayley has 15,064 GitHub stars, 1,238 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. Bytebase has 14,491 stars, 983 forks, 167 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cayley leads on adoption by 4% (15,064 vs 14,491 stars). cayley is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Bytebase is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. cayley has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Bytebase 7%. Bytebase 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
| cayley | Bytebase | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-27 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 983 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cayley if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Bytebase if
- You want the Bytebase feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Bytebase fits your workflow better
About cayley
Cayley is an open source graph database written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It stores and queries Linked Data, the graph shaped data model standardized by the W3C for the Semantic Web, and its design takes direct inspiration from the graph database that sat behind Google's Knowledge Graph, formerly known as Freebase. The project lives in the Go ecosystem and has been maintained in public for roughly twelve years, accumulating about 15,000 stars and 1,238 forks, with 93 open issues at the time of writing. Its topics — cayley, go, graph, graph database, linked data — describe both the language …
read the full cayley overview →
About Bytebase
Bytebase is an open source database governance platform that acts as a single control plane between human users, AI agents, and databases. It governs change management, access control, and compliance so that every database change and query can be reviewed, controlled, and recorded. The project sits in the Infrastructure and Operations database ecosystem, with topics that include CI/CD, DevOps, DevSecOps, GitOps, data governance, data masking, data security, database access, Flyway, Liquibase, and MongoDB.
read the full Bytebase overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cayley or Bytebase more popular?
cayley has 15,064 GitHub stars and Bytebase has 14,491. cayley has the larger community by that measure.
Are cayley and Bytebase free?
Both are open source. cayley is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Bytebase has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between cayley and Bytebase?
cayley is written in Go and Bytebase 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, cayley or Bytebase?
Choose cayley if you want the larger community (15,064 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Bytebase if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.