head to head · open source
drawDB vs rocksdb
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars, 3,350 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. rocksdb has 32,241 stars, 7,006 forks, 1,645 open issues and last shipped yesterday. drawDB leads on adoption by 25% (40,223 vs 32,241 stars). drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; rocksdb is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. drawDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, rocksdb 22%. rocksdb 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 | rocksdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 32K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 7.0K |
| 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 rocksdb if
- You want the rocksdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and rocksdb 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 rocksdb
RocksDB: A Persistent Key Value Store for Flash and RAM Storage RocksDB is developed and maintained by Facebook Database Engineering Team. It is built on earlier work on LevelDB by Sanjay Ghemawat (sanjay@google.com) and Jeff Dean (jeff@google.com) This code is a library that forms the core building block for a fast key value server, especially suited for storing data on flash drives. It has a Log Structured Merge Database (LSM) design with flexible tradeoffs between Write Amplification Factor (WAF), Read Amplification Factor (RAF) and Space Amplification Factor (SAF). It has multi threaded compactions, making…
read the full rocksdb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is drawDB or rocksdb more popular?
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars and rocksdb has 32,241. drawDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are drawDB and rocksdb free?
Both are open source. drawDB is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and rocksdb under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between drawDB and rocksdb?
drawDB is written in JavaScript and rocksdb 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 rocksdb?
Choose drawDB if you want the larger community (40,223 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose rocksdb if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.