head to head · open source
Cube vs helix-foundry
Cube has 21,125 GitHub stars, 2,178 forks, 1,185 open issues and last shipped yesterday. helix-foundry has 1,683 stars, 257 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cube leads on adoption by 1,155% (21,125 vs 1,683 stars). Cube is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; helix-foundry is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Cube has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, helix-foundry 15%. helix-foundry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Cube | helix-foundry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 257 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cube if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick helix-foundry if
- You want the helix-foundry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and helix-foundry fits your workflow better
About Cube
Website • Docs • Examples • Blog • Slack • X Cube Core is the open source semantic layer. Define metrics, dimensions, joins, and access rules once in code, then expose them through SQL, REST, and GraphQL APIs to anything downstream — BI tools, custom applications, or AI agents. Cube Core is headless: it doesn't ship a UI, so you can build the analytics experience that fits your product. Cube Core works with all SQL data sources, including cloud data warehouses like Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery; query engines like Presto and Amazon Athena; and application databases like Postgres. It has a built in…
About helix-foundry
Helix Foundry Connect your company's data, let an agent draft an ontology over it, and load it into HelixDB as one connected graph you can explore and ask questions of. Connect PostgreSQL, MySQL, Amazon S3, Stripe, PostHog, WorkOS, GitHub, Linear, Granola and Cal.com, and upload documents (Markdown, text, PDF) and table files (CSV, TSV, JSON, JSON Lines, Parquet). An agent drafts the ontology: types, links, the tables and documents each comes from, and rules. You review it, edit it and make a version current. A load writes the version into HelixDB. Explore it as a graph or as records, follow every value back to…
read the full helix-foundry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cube or helix-foundry more popular?
Cube has 21,125 GitHub stars and helix-foundry has 1,683. Cube has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cube and helix-foundry free?
Both are open source. Cube has no licence declared in this registry, and helix-foundry is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Cube and helix-foundry?
Cube is written in Rust and helix-foundry 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, Cube or helix-foundry?
Choose Cube if you want the larger community (21,125 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose helix-foundry if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.