head to head · open source
Apache Pinot vs lakeFS
Apache Pinot has 6,171 GitHub stars, 1,529 forks, 1,403 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lakeFS has 5,575 stars, 490 forks, 443 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Apache Pinot leads on adoption by 11% (6,171 vs 5,575 stars). Apache Pinot is written in Java under Apache-2.0; lakeFS is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. Apache Pinot has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, lakeFS 9%. Apache Pinot 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
| Apache Pinot | lakeFS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.2K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 490 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Apache Pinot if
- You weight community size — 6.2K 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 lakeFS if
- You want the lakeFS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and lakeFS fits your workflow better
About Apache Pinot
What is Apache Pinot? Features When should I use Pinot? Contributing to Pinot Apache Pinot YouTube Channel Building Pinot Deploying Pinot to Kubernetes Join the Community Documentation License What is Apache Pinot? Apache Pinot is a real time distributed OLAP datastore, built to deliver scalable real time analytics with low latency. It can ingest from batch data sources (such as Hadoop HDFS, Amazon S3, Azure ADLS, Google Cloud Storage) as well as stream data sources (such as Apache Kafka). Pinot was built by engineers at LinkedIn and Uber and is designed to scale up and out with no upper bound. Performance…
read the full Apache Pinot overview →
About lakeFS
lakeFS is Data Version Control (Git for Data) lakeFS is an open source tool that transforms your object storage into a Git like repository. It enables you to manage your data lake the way you manage your code. With lakeFS you can build repeatable, atomic, and versioned data lake operations from complex ETL jobs to data science and analytics. lakeFS supports AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage as its underlying storage service. It is API compatible with S3 and works seamlessly with all modern data frameworks such as Spark, Hive, AWS Athena, DuckDB, and Presto. For more information, see the…
read the full lakeFS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache Pinot or lakeFS more popular?
Apache Pinot has 6,171 GitHub stars and lakeFS has 5,575. Apache Pinot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache Pinot and lakeFS free?
Both are open source. Apache Pinot is licensed under Apache-2.0, and lakeFS has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Apache Pinot and lakeFS?
Apache Pinot is written in Java and lakeFS 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, Apache Pinot or lakeFS?
Choose Apache Pinot if you want the larger community (6,171 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lakeFS if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.