head to head · open source
TiDB vs juicefs
TiDB has 40,553 GitHub stars, 6,243 forks, 6,976 open issues and last shipped today. juicefs has 14,440 stars, 1,290 forks, 203 open issues and last shipped today. TiDB leads on adoption by 181% (40,553 vs 14,440 stars). TiDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0; juicefs is written in Go under Apache-2.0. TiDB has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, juicefs 9%. TiDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cloud-native, go), 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
| TiDB | juicefs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick TiDB if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick juicefs if
- You want the juicefs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and juicefs fits your workflow better
About TiDB
TiDB is an open source, cloud native, distributed SQL database written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0, aimed at teams that need ACID transactions, real time analytics, and vector search at scale without data silos.
About juicefs
JuiceFS is a Go based, Apache 2.0 distributed POSIX file system that stores file data in object storage and metadata in a database engine such as Redis, MySQL, SQLite, or TiKV, and it is aimed at cloud native infrastructure, big data, machine learning, and AI workloads.
read the full juicefs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is TiDB or juicefs more popular?
TiDB has 40,553 GitHub stars and juicefs has 14,440. TiDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are TiDB and juicefs free?
Both are open source. TiDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and juicefs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between TiDB and juicefs?
TiDB is written in Go and juicefs 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, TiDB or juicefs?
Choose TiDB if you want the larger community (40,553 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose juicefs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.