head to head · open source
etcd vs Qdrant
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars, 10,504 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Qdrant has 34,638 stars, 2,680 forks, 704 open issues and last shipped yesterday. etcd leads on adoption by 51% (52,270 vs 34,638 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Qdrant is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, Qdrant 8%. Qdrant 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 | Qdrant | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 35K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| 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 Qdrant if
- You want the Qdrant feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Qdrant 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 Qdrant
Qdrant is a vector similarity search engine and database built in Rust, designed for production use in AI applications. It stores, manages, and retrieves high dimensional vectors alongside associated metadata (payloads), supporting fast nearest neighbor search with filtering. It solves the problem of efficiently performing semantic or neural based matching at scale—such as finding similar images, recommending content, or powering retrieval augmented generation (RAG)—by replacing slow or inflexible brute force or index based approaches with a purpose built engine optimized for vector operations.…
read the full Qdrant overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or Qdrant more popular?
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars and Qdrant has 34,638. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and Qdrant free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Qdrant under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and Qdrant?
etcd is written in Go and Qdrant in Rust. 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 Qdrant?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Qdrant if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.