head to head · open source
realtime vs Lightdash
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars, 468 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightdash has 6,145 stars, 777 forks, 1,018 open issues and last shipped today. realtime leads on adoption by 24% (7,635 vs 6,145 stars). realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0; Lightdash is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. realtime has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Lightdash 13%. Lightdash 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
| realtime | Lightdash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.6K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Elixir | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 468 | ⑂ 777 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick realtime if
- You weight community size — 7.6K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Lightdash if
- You want the Lightdash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Lightdash fits your workflow better
About realtime
Supabase Realtime is a server built with Elixir on the Phoenix Framework that pushes three kinds of realtime functionality to browser and server clients over WebSockets. It lives in the Supabase ecosystem, where it acts as the realtime layer alongside Postgres, and it is distributed as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. The project has been public for roughly seven years, carries 7,632 stars and 463 forks, and its topic list places it in the company of change data capture, CRDT, distributed systems, pubsub, and PostgreSQL tooling.
read the full realtime overview →
About Lightdash
Lightdash is an open source, agentic business intelligence platform for modern data teams, written in TypeScript and distributed under a NOASSERTION license. It lives in the data and analytics ecosystem, specifically the data engineering and integration space, and it is built around dbt and warehouse native workflows. The project describes itself as agentic BI, meaning analytics is intended to move at the speed of code rather than through point and click configuration alone.
read the full Lightdash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is realtime or Lightdash more popular?
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars and Lightdash has 6,145. realtime has the larger community by that measure.
Are realtime and Lightdash free?
Both are open source. realtime is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Lightdash has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between realtime and Lightdash?
realtime is written in Elixir and Lightdash 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, realtime or Lightdash?
Choose realtime if you want the larger community (7,635 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Lightdash if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.