head to head · open source
kafka vs Trench
kafka has 33,750 GitHub stars, 15,521 forks, 574 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trench has 1,663 stars, 64 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. kafka leads on adoption by 1,929% (33,750 vs 1,663 stars). kafka is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Trench is written in TypeScript under MIT. kafka has attracted 46% as many forks as stars, Trench 4%. kafka was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (kafka), 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
| kafka | Trench | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-04-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 16K | ⑂ 64 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick kafka if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Trench if
- You want the Trench feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Trench fits your workflow better
About kafka
Apache Kafka is an open source distributed event streaming platform, written in Java and Scala, for organizations that need high performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission critical applications.
read the full kafka overview →
About Trench
Trench is an open source analytics infrastructure project written in TypeScript under the MIT license. It is built around Apache Kafka, ClickHouse, and a Node.js based service, and it is distributed as a single production ready Docker image for event tracking. The project sits in the open source event streaming and analytics ecosystem, where teams collect product events, query them quickly, and connect data to dashboards, LLM retrieval pipelines, observability tools, or other analytics products.
read the full Trench overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kafka or Trench more popular?
kafka has 33,750 GitHub stars and Trench has 1,663. kafka has the larger community by that measure.
Are kafka and Trench free?
Both are open source. kafka is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Trench under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kafka and Trench?
kafka is written in Java and Trench 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, kafka or Trench?
Choose kafka if you want the larger community (33,750 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Trench if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.