head to head · open source
orm vs drawDB
orm has 47,664 GitHub stars, 2,634 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped yesterday. drawDB has 40,223 stars, 3,350 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. orm leads on adoption by 18% (47,664 vs 40,223 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. orm has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, drawDB 8%. orm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (database, mariadb), 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
| orm | drawDB | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 40K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick orm if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick drawDB if
- You want the drawDB feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and drawDB fits your workflow better
About orm
Docs Discord X Blog Post Architecture Using Prisma 7? It remains fully supported. Its source lives on the v7 branch of this repository and its docs at prisma.io/docs/orm/v7. Prisma 8 is a release candidate. 8.0.0 final is expected in the next four to eight weeks. Until then a release candidate may include breaking changes, and every release ships with an upgrade recipe that the prisma 8 skill applies for you. The candidate is a complete implementation we stand behind: we treat bugs in it as urgent, and the risk you take on is a feature that is not built yet rather than churn. The feature scoreboard names every…
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is orm or drawDB more popular?
orm has 47,664 GitHub stars and drawDB has 40,223. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and drawDB free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and drawDB under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and drawDB?
orm is written in TypeScript and drawDB in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, orm or drawDB?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,664 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose drawDB if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.