head to head · open source
duckdb vs excelize
duckdb has 41,440 GitHub stars, 3,798 forks, 858 open issues and last shipped yesterday. excelize has 20,918 stars, 1,949 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. duckdb leads on adoption by 98% (41,440 vs 20,918 stars). duckdb is written in C++ under MIT; excelize is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. duckdb has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, excelize 9%. duckdb 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
| duckdb | excelize | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 21K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick duckdb if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick excelize if
- You want the excelize feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and excelize fits your workflow better
About duckdb
DuckDB is an analytical, in process SQL database management system written in C++ and released under the MIT license. It runs inside the application process rather than as a separate server, and it is distributed as a standalone command line application as well as through clients for Python, R, Java, and WebAssembly. The project lives in the analytical SQL ecosystem, where the topics listed for it are analytics, database, embedded database, OLAP, and SQL. It has been developed for about eight years, with the last push recorded on 15 September 2026.
read the full duckdb overview →
About excelize
Excelize is a pure Go library for reading and writing XLAM, XLSM, XLSX, XLTM and XLTX spreadsheets, built for Go developers who need to generate or parse Microsoft Excel 2007 and later workbooks directly from their own code.
read the full excelize overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is duckdb or excelize more popular?
duckdb has 41,440 GitHub stars and excelize has 20,918. duckdb has the larger community by that measure.
Are duckdb and excelize free?
Both are open source. duckdb is licensed under MIT and excelize under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between duckdb and excelize?
duckdb is written in C++ and excelize in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, duckdb or excelize?
Choose duckdb if you want the larger community (41,440 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose excelize if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.