head to head · open source
mcp-toolbox vs cayley
mcp-toolbox has 16,443 GitHub stars, 1,727 forks, 292 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cayley has 15,064 stars, 1,238 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. mcp-toolbox leads on adoption by 9% (16,443 vs 15,064 stars). mcp-toolbox is written in Go under Apache-2.0; cayley is written in Go under Apache-2.0. mcp-toolbox has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, cayley 8%. mcp-toolbox 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
| mcp-toolbox | cayley | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick mcp-toolbox if
- You weight community size — 16K 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 cayley if
- You want the cayley 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 cayley fits your workflow better
About mcp-toolbox
MCP Toolbox for Databases is an open source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0, that connects AI agents, IDEs, and applications directly to enterprise databases.
read the full mcp-toolbox overview →
About cayley
Cayley is an open source graph database written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It stores and queries Linked Data, the graph shaped data model standardized by the W3C for the Semantic Web, and its design takes direct inspiration from the graph database that sat behind Google's Knowledge Graph, formerly known as Freebase. The project lives in the Go ecosystem and has been maintained in public for roughly twelve years, accumulating about 15,000 stars and 1,238 forks, with 93 open issues at the time of writing. Its topics — cayley, go, graph, graph database, linked data — describe both the language …
read the full cayley overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is mcp-toolbox or cayley more popular?
mcp-toolbox has 16,443 GitHub stars and cayley has 15,064. mcp-toolbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are mcp-toolbox and cayley free?
Both are open source. mcp-toolbox is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cayley under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mcp-toolbox and cayley?
mcp-toolbox is written in Go and cayley 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, mcp-toolbox or cayley?
Choose mcp-toolbox if you want the larger community (16,443 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cayley if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.