head to head · open source
etcd vs q
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars, 10,552 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. q has 10,361 stars, 425 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. etcd leads on adoption by 406% (52,441 vs 10,361 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; q is written in Python under GPL-3.0. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, q 4%. etcd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (database), 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 | q | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 10K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-02-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 425 |
| 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 q if
- You want the q feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and q 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 q
q Text as Data q's purpose is to bring SQL expressive power to the Linux command line and to provide easy access to text as actual data. q allows the following: Performing SQL like statements directly on tabular text data, auto caching the data in order to accelerate additional querying on the same file. Performing SQL statements directly on multi file sqlite3 databases, without having to merge them or load them into memory The following table shows the impact of using caching: Notice that for the current version, caching is not enabled by default, since the caches take disk space. Use C readwrite or C read to…
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or q more popular?
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars and q has 10,361. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and q free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and q under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and q?
etcd is written in Go and q 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 q?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,441 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose q if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.