head to head · open source
excelize vs dbt
excelize has 21,036 GitHub stars, 1,984 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dbt has 14,112 stars, 2,658 forks, 1,534 open issues and last shipped yesterday. excelize leads on adoption by 49% (21,036 vs 14,112 stars). excelize is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; dbt is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. excelize has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dbt 19%. dbt was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (analytics), 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
| excelize | dbt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 14K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick excelize if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dbt if
- You want the dbt 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 dbt fits your workflow better
About excelize
Excelize Introduction Excelize is a library written in pure Go providing a set of functions that allow you to write to and read from XLAM / XLSM / XLSX / XLTM / XLTX files. Supports reading and writing spreadsheet documents generated by Microsoft Excel™ 2007 and later. Supports complex components by high compatibility, and provided streaming API for generating or reading data from a worksheet with huge amounts of data. This library needs Go version 1.25.0 or later. The full docs can be seen using go's built in documentation tool, or online at go.dev and docs reference. Basic Usage Installation If your…
read the full excelize overview →
About dbt
[!WARNING] dbt v1 development has moved to the 1.latest branch. The main branch now contains all the Apache 2.0 source code of dbt v2.0 — a ground up rewrite of dbt in Rust. If you're looking for the v1 Python implementation of the dbt framework, switch to 1.latest . dbt enables data analysts and engineers to transform their data using the same practices that software engineers use to build applications. About dbt v2.0 🚧 dbt v2.0 is in beta. Behavior, APIs, and on disk formats may change before the stable release. dbt v2.0 is engineered for performance at scale. It parses, compiles, and runs projects in a…
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Frequently asked questions
Is excelize or dbt more popular?
excelize has 21,036 GitHub stars and dbt has 14,112. excelize has the larger community by that measure.
Are excelize and dbt free?
Both are open source. excelize is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and dbt under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between excelize and dbt?
excelize is written in Go and dbt 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, excelize or dbt?
Choose excelize if you want the larger community (21,036 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose dbt if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.