head to head · open source
etcd vs finagle
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars, 10,506 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped today. finagle has 8,866 stars, 1,428 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. etcd leads on adoption by 490% (52,270 vs 8,866 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; finagle is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, finagle 16%. etcd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (distributed-systems), 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| etcd | finagle | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 8.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 finagle if
- You want the finagle feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and finagle 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 finagle
Finagle is a fault tolerant, protocol agnostic RPC system for the JVM, written in Scala and used to construct high concurrency servers, and it is aimed at JVM engineers who want one uniform client and server API across several network protocols instead of a separate stack for each one.
read the full finagle overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or finagle more popular?
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars and finagle has 8,866. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and finagle free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and finagle under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and finagle?
etcd is written in Go and finagle in Scala. 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 finagle?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose finagle if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.