head to head · open source
realtime vs docetl
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars, 468 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. docetl has 4,101 stars, 443 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. realtime leads on adoption by 86% (7,635 vs 4,101 stars). realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0; docetl is written in Python under MIT. realtime has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, docetl 11%. realtime 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
| realtime | docetl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.6K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Elixir | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 468 | ⑂ 443 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick realtime if
- You weight community size — 7.6K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- 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 realtime
Supabase Realtime is a server built with Elixir on the Phoenix Framework that pushes three kinds of realtime functionality to browser and server clients over WebSockets. It lives in the Supabase ecosystem, where it acts as the realtime layer alongside Postgres, and it is distributed as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. The project has been public for roughly seven years, carries 7,632 stars and 463 forks, and its topic list places it in the company of change data capture, CRDT, distributed systems, pubsub, and PostgreSQL tooling.
read the full realtime overview →
About docetl
DocETL is a Python system for agentic LLM powered data processing and ETL. It lives in the data engineering and document processing ecosystem, where pipelines must turn structured records and unstructured documents into queryable tables. Users describe each operation in natural language, and DocETL provides operators such as map, reduce, and filter, then orchestrates them across the data.
read the full docetl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is realtime or docetl more popular?
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars and docetl has 4,101. realtime has the larger community by that measure.
Are realtime and docetl free?
Both are open source. realtime is licensed under Apache-2.0 and docetl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between realtime and docetl?
realtime is written in Elixir 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, realtime or docetl?
Choose realtime if you want the larger community (7,635 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose docetl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.