head to head · open source
etcd vs risingwave
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars, 10,552 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. risingwave has 9,398 stars, 862 forks, 1,687 open issues and last shipped yesterday. etcd leads on adoption by 458% (52,441 vs 9,398 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 | ★ 9.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 862 |
| 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 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 risingwave
🌊 Event Streaming for Agentic AI Docs Benchmarks Demos Case Studies RisingWave is an event streaming platform for agentic AI. It continuously ingests data from databases, event streams, and webhooks, processes it incrementally, and serves fresh results at low latency, replacing the traditional event streaming stack (e.g., Debezium + Kafka + Flink + serving DB) with a single system. Try it out in 60 seconds For Docker, Kubernetes, and other options, see the quick start guide. The problem Agents and real time applications need data that is always fresh and queryable at low latency. The standard approach chains…
read the full risingwave overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or risingwave more popular?
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars and risingwave has 9,398. 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 (52,441 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.