head to head · open source
steampipe vs CloudQuery
steampipe has 7,994 GitHub stars, 347 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CloudQuery has 6,550 stars, 567 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. steampipe leads on adoption by 22% (7,994 vs 6,550 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%. steampipe 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 | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 347 | ⑂ 567 |
| 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
select from cloud; Steampipe is the zero ETL way to query APIs and services. Use it to expose data sources to SQL. SQL . It's been the data access standard for decades. Live data . Query APIs in real time. Speed . Query APIs faster than you ever thought possible. Concurrency . Query many data sources in parallel. Single binary . Use it locally, deploy it in CI/CD pipelines. Demo time! Documentation See the documentation for: Running queries Managing Steampipe CLI commands Integrations Developing plugins Install Steampipe Install Steampipe from the downloads page: Install a plugin for your favorite service (e.g…
read the full steampipe overview →
About CloudQuery
CloudOps, without the chaos CloudQuery is a cloud asset inventory built for platform teams. Sync your cloud infrastructure metadata into your data warehouse, powering insights and automation. Unify data and provide context across AWS, Azure, GCP, and 70+ cloud and SaaS sources such as Wiz, Finout, and GitHub. Installation Check out the quickstart guide for install guides for Linux and Windows and for step by step instructions on completing your first sync with CloudQuery. Why CloudQuery? Specialized plugin coverage Support for cloud infrastructure, security, and FinOps sources with normalization, rate limit…
read the full CloudQuery overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is steampipe or CloudQuery more popular?
steampipe has 7,994 GitHub stars and CloudQuery has 6,550. 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 (7,994 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.