head to head · open source
debezium vs flink-cdc
debezium has 13,307 GitHub stars, 3,124 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flink-cdc has 6,493 stars, 2,205 forks, 119 open issues and last shipped yesterday. debezium leads on adoption by 105% (13,307 vs 6,493 stars). debezium is written in Java under Apache-2.0; flink-cdc is written in Java under Apache-2.0. debezium has attracted 23% as many forks as stars, flink-cdc 34%. debezium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (cdc, change-data-capture, data-pipeline, kafka), 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
| debezium | flink-cdc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 flink-cdc if
- You want the flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc
Flink CDC is a distributed data integration tool for real time data and batch data, built on top of Apache Flink. It prioritizes efficient end to end data integration and offers enhanced functionalities such as full database synchronization, sharding table synchronization, schema evolution and data transformation. API Layers Flink CDC provides three API layers for different usage scenarios: 1. YAML API (Pipeline API) The YAML API provides a declarative, zero code approach to define data pipelines. Users describe the source, sink, routing, transformation, and schema evolution rules in a YAML file and submit it…
read the full flink-cdc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is debezium or flink-cdc more popular?
debezium has 13,307 GitHub stars and flink-cdc has 6,493. debezium has the larger community by that measure.
Are debezium and flink-cdc free?
Both are open source. debezium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and flink-cdc under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between debezium and flink-cdc?
debezium is written in Java and flink-cdc 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, debezium or flink-cdc?
Choose debezium if you want the larger community (13,307 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose flink-cdc if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.