head to head · open source
drawDB vs Dragonfly
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars, 3,350 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Dragonfly has 31,844 stars, 1,295 forks, 308 open issues and last shipped yesterday. drawDB leads on adoption by 26% (40,223 vs 31,844 stars). drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; Dragonfly is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence. drawDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Dragonfly 4%. Dragonfly was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (database), 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
| drawDB | Dragonfly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 32K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick drawDB if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Dragonfly if
- You want the Dragonfly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Dragonfly fits your workflow better
About drawDB
drawDB Free, simple, and intuitive database schema editor and SQL generator. DrawDB is a robust and user friendly database entity relationship diagram (ERD) editor right in your browser. Build diagrams with a few clicks, export and import SQL scripts, generate migrations, customize your editor, and more without creating an account. See the full set of features on here. Getting Started Local Development Build Docker Build If you want to enable sharing, set up the server and environment variables according to .env.sample . This is optional unless you need to share files. Contributing Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for…
read the full drawDB overview →
About Dragonfly
Before moving on, please consider giving us a GitHub star ⭐️. Thank you! Other languages: 简体中文 日本語 한국어 Português ภาษาไทย Website • Docs • Quick Start • Community Discord • Dragonfly User Conference • Join the Dragonfly Community GitHub Discussions • GitHub Issues • Contributing • AI Agents Guide • Dragonfly Cloud The world's most efficient in memory data store Dragonfly is an in memory data store built for modern application workloads. Fully compatible with Redis and Memcached APIs, Dragonfly requires no code changes to adopt. Compared to legacy in memory datastores, Dragonfly delivers 25X more throughput…
read the full Dragonfly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is drawDB or Dragonfly more popular?
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars and Dragonfly has 31,844. drawDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are drawDB and Dragonfly free?
Both are open source. drawDB is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Dragonfly has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between drawDB and Dragonfly?
drawDB is written in JavaScript and Dragonfly in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, drawDB or Dragonfly?
Choose drawDB if you want the larger community (40,223 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Dragonfly if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.