head to head · open source
duckdb vs rocksdb
duckdb has 42,747 GitHub stars, 4,176 forks, 858 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rocksdb has 32,241 stars, 7,006 forks, 1,645 open issues and last shipped yesterday. duckdb leads on adoption by 33% (42,747 vs 32,241 stars). duckdb is written in C++ under MIT; rocksdb is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. duckdb has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, rocksdb 22%. duckdb 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
| duckdb | rocksdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 32K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 7.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick duckdb if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- 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 duckdb
DuckDB DuckDB is a high performance analytical database system. It is designed to be fast, reliable, portable, and easy to use. DuckDB provides a rich SQL dialect with support far beyond basic SQL. DuckDB supports arbitrary and nested correlated subqueries, window functions, collations, complex types (arrays, structs, maps), and several extensions designed to make SQL easier to use. DuckDB is available as a standalone CLI application and has clients for Python, R, Java, Wasm, etc., with deep integrations with packages such as pandas and dplyr. For more information on using DuckDB, please refer to the DuckDB…
read the full duckdb 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 duckdb or rocksdb more popular?
duckdb has 42,747 GitHub stars and rocksdb has 32,241. duckdb has the larger community by that measure.
Are duckdb and rocksdb free?
Both are open source. duckdb is licensed under MIT and rocksdb under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between duckdb and rocksdb?
duckdb is written in C++ 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, duckdb or rocksdb?
Choose duckdb if you want the larger community (42,747 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rocksdb if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.