head to head · open source
debezium vs steampipe
debezium has 13,129 GitHub stars, 3,042 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. steampipe has 7,955 stars, 341 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. debezium leads on adoption by 65% (13,129 vs 7,955 stars). debezium is written in Java under Apache-2.0; steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. debezium has attracted 23% as many forks as stars, steampipe 4%. debezium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| debezium | steampipe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 8.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 341 |
| 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 steampipe if
- You want the steampipe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and steampipe fits your workflow better
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 →
About steampipe
Steampipe is an AGPL 3.0, Go based zero ETL tool that maps APIs and services to SQL tables, letting anyone who already writes SQL — cloud engineers, DevSecOps and security teams, data engineers — query live data from AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub and Kubernetes without building a pipeline or running a database.
read the full steampipe overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Engineering & Integration projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Engineering & Integration field.
Frequently asked questions
Is debezium or steampipe more popular?
debezium has 13,129 GitHub stars and steampipe has 7,955. debezium has the larger community by that measure.
Are debezium and steampipe free?
Both are open source. debezium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and steampipe under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between debezium and steampipe?
debezium is written in Java and steampipe in Go. 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 steampipe?
Choose debezium if you want the larger community (13,129 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose steampipe if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.