head to head · open source
Cube vs OpenContracts
Cube has 21,147 GitHub stars, 2,179 forks, 1,185 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenContracts has 1,530 stars, 198 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cube leads on adoption by 1,282% (21,147 vs 1,530 stars). Cube is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; OpenContracts is written in Python under MIT. Cube has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, OpenContracts 13%. Cube was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai), 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
| Cube | OpenContracts | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 198 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cube if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OpenContracts if
- You want the OpenContracts feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and OpenContracts fits your workflow better
About Cube
Website • Docs • Examples • Blog • Slack • X Cube Core is the open source semantic layer. Define metrics, dimensions, joins, and access rules once in code, then expose them through SQL, REST, and GraphQL APIs to anything downstream — BI tools, custom applications, or AI agents. Cube Core is headless: it doesn't ship a UI, so you can build the analytics experience that fits your product. Cube Core works with all SQL data sources, including cloud data warehouses like Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery; query engines like Presto and Amazon Athena; and application databases like Postgres. It has a built in…
About OpenContracts
OpenContracts (Demo) Open source document intelligence you can build on. Point OpenContracts at a repository of documents and get a programmable citation graph — human annotation, structured extraction, AI agents, and a built in MCP server, all behind one API. Self hosted, MIT licensed, and built for teams working at scale. Same graph, three surfaces: a GraphQL + REST API for your apps, a Model Context Protocol server for your agents, and a React UI for your team. From documents to a citation graph — in about a minute Create a corpus, drop in your documents, and click Set up . That one click installs the…
read the full OpenContracts overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cube or OpenContracts more popular?
Cube has 21,147 GitHub stars and OpenContracts has 1,530. Cube has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cube and OpenContracts free?
Both are open source. Cube has no licence declared in this registry, and OpenContracts is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Cube and OpenContracts?
Cube is written in Rust and OpenContracts in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Cube or OpenContracts?
Choose Cube if you want the larger community (21,147 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose OpenContracts if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.