head to head · open source
Harper vs kysely
Harper has 15,469 GitHub stars, 632 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kysely has 14,233 stars, 444 forks, 173 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harper leads on adoption by 9% (15,469 vs 14,233 stars). Harper is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; kysely is written in TypeScript under MIT. Harper has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, kysely 3%. Harper was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| Harper | kysely | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 632 | ⑂ 444 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harper if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 Harper
Harper is offline, privacy first grammar checker for English. It lives in productivity, browser extension, developer tools, and text editing ecosystem. Project is open source under Apache 2.0. GitHub metadata shows 15373 stars, 627 forks, and 896 open issues. Last push is 2026 09 14. Category is Productivity & Utilities / Browsers & Extensions. It uses Rust for core, WebAssembly for browser loading, language server for editors, JavaScript package for web and Node.js apps. It solves slow, costly, network dependent grammar checking. It replaces Grammarly and LanguageTool as named in README. Grammarly sends writing …
read the full Harper overview →
About kysely
Kysely is a type safe TypeScript SQL query builder for Node.js, Deno, Bun, and the browser. It provides a fluent API to construct and execute type safe SQL queries, preventing runtime errors from invalid column names or incorrect data types. The core problem it solves is eliminating the fragility of raw SQL strings and the lack of type safety in many ORMs within the TypeScript ecosystem.
read the full kysely overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harper or kysely more popular?
Harper has 15,469 GitHub stars and kysely has 14,233. Harper has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harper and kysely free?
Both are open source. Harper is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kysely under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harper and kysely?
Harper is written in Rust 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, Harper or kysely?
Choose Harper if you want the larger community (15,469 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kysely if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.