head to head · open source
Airbyte vs debezium
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars, 5,350 forks, 2,395 open issues and last shipped yesterday. debezium has 13,129 stars, 3,042 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Airbyte leads on adoption by 68% (22,082 vs 13,129 stars). Airbyte is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; debezium is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Airbyte has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, debezium 23%. Airbyte was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (change-data-capture, data-pipeline), 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
| Airbyte | debezium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 13K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Airbyte if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick debezium if
- You want the debezium 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 debezium fits your workflow better
About Airbyte
Airbyte open source data movement project. It lives in data engineering and data integration ecosystem. It moves data from APIs, databases, and files into warehouses, data lakes, and AI applications. It supports ELT and ETL pipelines. It also supports AI agents needing business data.
read the full Airbyte overview →
About debezium
Debezium is an open source, low latency change data capture (CDC) platform that monitors databases and turns every row level change into an ordered event stream that applications consume, and it is built for Java teams already running Apache Kafka and Kafka Connect.
read the full debezium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Airbyte or debezium more popular?
Airbyte has 22,082 GitHub stars and debezium has 13,129. Airbyte has the larger community by that measure.
Are Airbyte and debezium free?
Both are open source. Airbyte has no licence declared in this registry, and debezium is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Airbyte and debezium?
Airbyte is written in Python and debezium 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, Airbyte or debezium?
Choose Airbyte if you want the larger community (22,082 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose debezium if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.