head to head · open source
etcd vs citus
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars, 10,552 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. citus has 12,840 stars, 805 forks, 1,075 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. etcd leads on adoption by 308% (52,441 vs 12,840 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; citus is written in C under AGPL-3.0. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, citus 6%. etcd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (database, distributed-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
| etcd | citus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 805 |
| 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 citus if
- You want the citus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and citus 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 citus
What is Citus? Citus is a PostgreSQL extension that transforms Postgres into a distributed database—so you can achieve high performance at any scale. With Citus, you extend your PostgreSQL database with new superpowers: Distributed tables are sharded across a cluster of PostgreSQL nodes to combine their CPU, memory, storage and I/O capacity. Reference tables are replicated to all nodes for joins and foreign keys from distributed tables and to maximize read performance. Distributed query engine routes and parallelizes SELECT, DML, and other operations on distributed tables across the cluster. Columnar storage…
read the full citus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or citus more popular?
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars and citus has 12,840. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and citus free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and citus under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and citus?
etcd is written in Go and citus 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, etcd or citus?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,441 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose citus if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.