head to head · open source
etcd vs postgres-operator
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars, 10,506 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. postgres-operator has 5,241 stars, 1,070 forks, 546 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. etcd leads on adoption by 897% (52,270 vs 5,241 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; postgres-operator is written in Go under MIT. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, postgres-operator 20%. etcd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (kubernetes), 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 | postgres-operator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 5.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| 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 postgres-operator if
- You want the postgres-operator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and postgres-operator 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 postgres-operator
Postgres Operator is an MIT licensed Kubernetes operator, written in Go and developed at Zalando, that creates and manages highly available PostgreSQL clusters through Postgres manifests (CRDs), built for platform and infrastructure teams that want database as a service inside their own Kubernetes clusters.
read the full postgres-operator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or postgres-operator more popular?
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars and postgres-operator has 5,241. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and postgres-operator free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and postgres-operator under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and postgres-operator?
etcd is written in Go and postgres-operator in Go. 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 postgres-operator?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose postgres-operator if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.