head to head · open source
steampipe vs CloudQuery
steampipe has 7,957 GitHub stars, 341 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. CloudQuery has 6,521 stars, 558 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. steampipe leads on adoption by 22% (7,957 vs 6,521 stars). steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; CloudQuery is written in Go under MPL-2.0. steampipe has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, CloudQuery 9%. CloudQuery was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (aws, azure, cspm), 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
| steampipe | CloudQuery | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.0K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 341 | ⑂ 558 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick steampipe if
- You weight community size — 8.0K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick CloudQuery if
- You want the CloudQuery feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and CloudQuery fits your workflow better
About steampipe
Steampipe is an AGPL 3.0, Go based zero ETL tool that maps APIs and services to SQL tables, letting anyone who already writes SQL — cloud engineers, DevSecOps and security teams, data engineers — query live data from AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub and Kubernetes without building a pipeline or running a database.
read the full steampipe overview →
About CloudQuery
CloudQuery is an open source, Go based cloud asset inventory and ELT tool, licensed under MPL 2.0, that syncs metadata from AWS, Azure, GCP, and more than 70 cloud and SaaS sources into a data warehouse so platform, security, and FinOps teams can query it with SQL.
read the full CloudQuery overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is steampipe or CloudQuery more popular?
steampipe has 7,957 GitHub stars and CloudQuery has 6,521. steampipe has the larger community by that measure.
Are steampipe and CloudQuery free?
Both are open source. steampipe is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and CloudQuery under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between steampipe and CloudQuery?
steampipe is written in Go and CloudQuery 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, steampipe or CloudQuery?
Choose steampipe if you want the larger community (7,957 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose CloudQuery if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.