head to head · open source
etcd vs crystal
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars, 10,552 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crystal has 12,936 stars, 632 forks, 169 open issues and last shipped yesterday. etcd leads on adoption by 305% (52,441 vs 12,936 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; crystal is written in TypeScript under MIT. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, crystal 5%. crystal 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 | crystal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 632 |
| 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 crystal if
- You want the crystal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and crystal 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 crystal
🔮 Graphile's Crystal Monorepo At Graphile we love GraphQL so much we named ourself for our love of it! This repository houses many of the Graphile packages that relate to GraphQL (or relate to the packages that relate to GraphQL, or relate to those package...); the two headline projects are Gra fast and PostGraphile but there's many other packages, a fair few of which can be used independently see below for more details. [Grafast][grafast] : A cutting edge planning and execution engine for GraphQL.js ─ use this as a drop in replacement for the execute method from GraphQL.js and by moving from traditional…
read the full crystal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or crystal more popular?
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars and crystal has 12,936. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and crystal free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and crystal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and crystal?
etcd is written in Go and crystal in TypeScript. 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 crystal?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,441 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crystal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.