head to head · open source
etcd vs cayley
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars, 10,552 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cayley has 15,067 stars, 1,234 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. etcd leads on adoption by 248% (52,441 vs 15,067 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; cayley is written in Go under Apache-2.0. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, cayley 8%. etcd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (go), 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
| etcd | cayley | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 cayley if
- You want the cayley feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cayley fits your workflow better
About etcd
etcd Note : The main branch may be in an unstable or even broken state during development. For stable versions, see [releases][github release]. etcd is a distributed reliable key value store for the most critical data of a distributed system, with a focus on being: Simple : well defined, user facing API (gRPC) Secure : automatic TLS with optional client cert authentication Fast : benchmarked 10,000 writes/sec Reliable : properly distributed using Raft etcd is written in Go and uses the [Raft][] consensus algorithm to manage a highly available replicated log. etcd is used in production by many companies, and the…
About cayley
Cayley is an open source database for Linked Data. It is inspired by the graph database behind Google's Knowledge Graph (formerly Freebase)). Documentation Features Built in query editor, visualizer and REPL Multiple query languages: Gizmo: query language inspired by Gremlin GraphQL inspired query language MQL: simplified version for Freebase) fans Modular: easy to connect to your favorite programming languages and back end stores Production ready: well tested and used by various companies for their production workloads Fast: optimized specifically for usage in applications Performance Rough performance testing…
read the full cayley overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or cayley more popular?
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars and cayley has 15,067. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and cayley free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cayley under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and cayley?
etcd is written in Go and cayley in Go. 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 cayley?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,441 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cayley if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.