head to head · open source
debezium vs docetl
debezium has 13,307 GitHub stars, 3,124 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. docetl has 4,189 stars, 460 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. debezium leads on adoption by 218% (13,307 vs 4,189 stars). debezium is written in Java under Apache-2.0; docetl is written in Python under MIT. debezium has attracted 23% as many forks as stars, docetl 11%. debezium 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
| debezium | docetl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 4.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 460 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick debezium if
- You weight community size — 13K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick docetl if
- You want the docetl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and docetl fits your workflow better
About debezium
Copyright Debezium Authors. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. The Antlr grammars within the debezium ddl parser module are licensed under the MIT License. English Chinese Japanese Korean Debezium Debezium is an open source project that provides a low latency data streaming platform for change data capture (CDC). You set up and configure Debezium to monitor your databases, and then your applications consume events for each row level change made to the database. Only committed changes are visible, so your application doesn't have to worry about transactions or changes that are rolled back. Debezium…
read the full debezium overview →
About docetl
DocETL: Declarative & Agentic Map Reduce What is DocETL · Install · Python API · YAML · DocWrangler UI · Docs What is DocETL DocETL helps you process large collections of data (structured and unstructured) with LLMs. You write each operation in natural language, e.g., "pull out every complaint in this ticket," and DocETL provides the operators you need (map, reduce, filter, and more) and orchestrates them, parallelizing work across your data, optimizes your pipeline automatically, swapping models, rewriting prompts, decomposing operations, and replacing subtasks with code wherever possible, to raise accuracy and…
read the full docetl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is debezium or docetl more popular?
debezium has 13,307 GitHub stars and docetl has 4,189. debezium has the larger community by that measure.
Are debezium and docetl free?
Both are open source. debezium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and docetl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between debezium and docetl?
debezium is written in Java and docetl 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, debezium or docetl?
Choose debezium if you want the larger community (13,307 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose docetl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.