head to head · open source
etcd vs risingwave
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars, 10,506 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped today. risingwave has 9,330 stars, 838 forks, 1,687 open issues and last shipped today. etcd leads on adoption by 460% (52,270 vs 9,330 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; risingwave is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, risingwave 9%. risingwave 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 | risingwave | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 838 |
| 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 risingwave if
- You want the risingwave 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 risingwave 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 risingwave
RisingWave is an Apache 2.0, Rust written event streaming platform for agentic AI that continuously ingests data from databases, event streams and webhooks, processes it incrementally, and serves fresh results at low latency, and it is aimed at teams building agents, real time applications and streaming data pipelines that need always current, queryable data.
read the full risingwave overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or risingwave more popular?
etcd has 52,270 GitHub stars and risingwave has 9,330. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and risingwave free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and risingwave under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and risingwave?
etcd is written in Go and risingwave 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 risingwave?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose risingwave if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.