head to head · open source
etcd vs sled
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars, 10,552 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sled has 9,104 stars, 429 forks, 172 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. etcd leads on adoption by 476% (52,441 vs 9,104 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; sled is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, sled 5%. 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 | sled | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 9.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-04-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 429 |
| 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 sled if
- You want the sled 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 sled 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 sled
key value documentation chat about databases with us sled it's all downhill from here!!! An embedded database. $${\color{red}This \space README \space is \space out \space of \space sync \space with \space the \space main \space branch \space which \space contains \space a \space large \space in progress \space rewrite }$$ If you would like to work with structured data without paying expensive deserialization costs, check out the structured example! features API similar to a threadsafe BTreeMap serializable (ACID) transactions for atomically reading and writing to multiple keys in multiple keyspaces. fully…
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or sled more popular?
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars and sled has 9,104. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and sled free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sled under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and sled?
etcd is written in Go and sled 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 sled?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,441 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sled if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.