head to head · open source
feathers vs kysely
feathers has 15,256 GitHub stars, 802 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. kysely has 14,327 stars, 456 forks, 173 open issues and last shipped yesterday. feathers leads on adoption by 6% (15,256 vs 14,327 stars). feathers is written in TypeScript under MIT; kysely is written in TypeScript under MIT. feathers has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, kysely 3%. kysely was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (browser, nodejs), 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
| feathers | kysely | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 802 | ⑂ 456 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick feathers if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick kysely if
- You want the kysely feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and kysely fits your workflow better
About feathers
Feathers is a full stack framework for creating web APIs and real time applications with TypeScript or JavaScript. Feathers can interact with any backend technology, supports many databases out of the box and works with any frontend like React, VueJS, Angular, React Native, Android or iOS. Getting started Get started with just three commands: To learn more about Feathers visit the website at feathersjs.com or jump right into the Feathers guides. Contributing To start developing, clone this repository, then run: To run all tests run Individual tests can be run in the module you are working on: License Copyright…
read the full feathers overview →
About kysely
Join the discussion ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Get started & more! Kysely Kysely (pronounce “Key Seh Lee”) is a type safe and autocompletion friendly TypeScript SQL query builder. Inspired by Knex.js. Mainly developed for Node.js but also runs on all other JavaScript environments like Deno, Bun, Cloudflare Workers and web browsers. Kysely makes sure you only refer to tables and columns that are visible to the part of the query you're writing. The result type only has the selected columns with correct types and aliases. As an added bonus you get autocompletion for all that stuff. As shown in the gif above, through the pure magic of…
read the full kysely overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is feathers or kysely more popular?
feathers has 15,256 GitHub stars and kysely has 14,327. feathers has the larger community by that measure.
Are feathers and kysely free?
Both are open source. feathers is licensed under MIT and kysely under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between feathers and kysely?
feathers is written in TypeScript and kysely in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, feathers or kysely?
Choose feathers if you want the larger community (15,256 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kysely if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.