head to head · open source
etcd vs activegraph
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars, 10,504 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. activegraph has 1,405 stars, 273 forks, 242 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. etcd leads on adoption by 3,620% (52,270 vs 1,405 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; activegraph is written in Ruby under MIT. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, activegraph 19%. etcd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| etcd | activegraph | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 273 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick etcd if
- You weight community size — 52K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick activegraph if
- You want the activegraph feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and activegraph fits your workflow better
About etcd
etcd is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go written distributed key value store that holds the most critical data of a distributed system in a Raft replicated log, aimed at the platform and infrastructure engineers who must keep that control plane data consistent and available.
About activegraph
activegraph is a Ruby and JRuby wrapper for the Neo4j graph database, formerly called Neo4j.rb. It provides an Active Model compliant wrapper over Neo4j, so Ruby applications can work with graph data through model code and associations instead of writing low level database calls. The project lives in the Ruby ecosystem and sits in the database and infrastructure category, with topics that include graph database, neo4j, orm, railtie, and ruby.
read the full activegraph overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or activegraph more popular?
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars and activegraph has 1,405. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and activegraph free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and activegraph under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and activegraph?
etcd is written in Go and activegraph in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, etcd or activegraph?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose activegraph if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.