head to head · open source
Cube vs seatunnel
Cube has 20,857 GitHub stars, 2,138 forks, 1,185 open issues and last shipped yesterday. seatunnel has 9,655 stars, 2,413 forks, 705 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cube leads on adoption by 116% (20,857 vs 9,655 stars). Cube is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; seatunnel is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Cube has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, seatunnel 25%. Cube 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
| Cube | seatunnel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 9.7K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 seatunnel if
- You want the seatunnel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and seatunnel fits your workflow better
About Cube
Cube Core is an open source semantic layer for AI, BI, and embedded analytics. It lives in the data analytics and data engineering ecosystem for SQL warehouses, BI tools, applications, and AI agents. It lets teams define metrics, dimensions, joins, and access rules once in code, then expose them through SQL, REST, and GraphQL APIs. It is headless and ships no user interface.
About seatunnel
Apache SeaTunnel is a multimodal, high performance, distributed data integration tool that is capable of synchronizing vast amounts of data daily. It is an Apache Software Foundation project written in Java and released under the Apache 2.0 license, with a home on the web at seatunnel.apache.org. The project has been in development for roughly nine years and has accumulated 9,652 stars and 2,407 forks on GitHub. It sits in the Data & Analytics ecosystem, specifically in data engineering and integration, and it is built around a connector driven model: sources, sinks, and transforms are configured as jobs, and tho…
read the full seatunnel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cube or seatunnel more popular?
Cube has 20,857 GitHub stars and seatunnel has 9,655. Cube has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cube and seatunnel free?
Both are open source. Cube has no licence declared in this registry, and seatunnel is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Cube and seatunnel?
Cube is written in Rust and seatunnel in Java. 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 seatunnel?
Choose Cube if you want the larger community (20,857 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose seatunnel if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.