head to head · open source
seatunnel vs docetl
seatunnel has 9,657 GitHub stars, 2,416 forks, 705 open issues and last shipped today. docetl has 4,101 stars, 443 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. seatunnel leads on adoption by 135% (9,657 vs 4,101 stars). seatunnel is written in Java under Apache-2.0; docetl is written in Python under MIT. seatunnel has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, docetl 11%. seatunnel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (elt, llm), 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
| seatunnel | docetl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.7K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 443 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick seatunnel if
- You weight community size — 9.7K 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 seatunnel
Apache SeaTunnel is a multimodal, high performance, distributed data integration tool that is capable of synchronizing vast amounts of data daily. It is an Apache Software Foundation project written in Java and released under the Apache 2.0 license, with a home on the web at seatunnel.apache.org. The project has been in development for roughly nine years and has accumulated 9,652 stars and 2,407 forks on GitHub. It sits in the Data & Analytics ecosystem, specifically in data engineering and integration, and it is built around a connector driven model: sources, sinks, and transforms are configured as jobs, and tho…
read the full seatunnel 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 seatunnel or docetl more popular?
seatunnel has 9,657 GitHub stars and docetl has 4,101. seatunnel has the larger community by that measure.
Are seatunnel and docetl free?
Both are open source. seatunnel is licensed under Apache-2.0 and docetl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between seatunnel and docetl?
seatunnel 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, seatunnel or docetl?
Choose seatunnel if you want the larger community (9,657 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose docetl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.