head to head · open source
etcd vs lettuce
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars, 10,506 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped today. lettuce has 5,778 stars, 1,101 forks, 204 open issues and last shipped today. etcd leads on adoption by 805% (52,270 vs 5,778 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; lettuce is written in Java under MIT. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, lettuce 19%. lettuce 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 | lettuce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 5.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 lettuce if
- You want the lettuce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and lettuce 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 lettuce
Lettuce is an MIT licensed, thread safe Java Redis client from the Redis organization that speaks to Redis over synchronous, asynchronous, and reactive APIs, and it is aimed at Java teams running Redis or Redis compatible caches such as AWS ElastiCache and Azure Redis Cache.
read the full lettuce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or lettuce more popular?
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars and lettuce has 5,778. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and lettuce free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and lettuce under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and lettuce?
etcd is written in Go and lettuce in Java. 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 lettuce?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lettuce if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.