head to head · open source
etcd vs kombu
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars, 10,506 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kombu has 3,141 stars, 1,043 forks, 217 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. etcd leads on adoption by 1,564% (52,270 vs 3,141 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; kombu is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, kombu 33%. 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 | kombu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 kombu if
- You want the kombu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and kombu 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 kombu
Kombu is a BSD 3 Clause licensed Python messaging library that gives application authors an idiomatic, high level interface to the AMQP protocol and pluggable transports for Redis, Amazon SQS, MongoDB, PGMQ, ZooKeeper, SoftLayer MQ, and Pyro, aimed at Python developers and Celery based teams that need one consistent messaging API across several brokers.
read the full kombu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or kombu more popular?
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars and kombu has 3,141. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and kombu free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kombu under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and kombu?
etcd is written in Go and kombu in Python. 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 kombu?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kombu if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.