head to head · open source
drawDB vs mikro-orm
drawDB has 40,237 GitHub stars, 3,352 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. mikro-orm has 9,267 stars, 701 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped yesterday. drawDB leads on adoption by 334% (40,237 vs 9,267 stars). drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; mikro-orm is written in TypeScript under MIT. drawDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, mikro-orm 8%. mikro-orm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (database), 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
| drawDB | mikro-orm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 701 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick drawDB if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mikro-orm if
- You want the mikro-orm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and mikro-orm fits your workflow better
About drawDB
drawDB Free, simple, and intuitive database schema editor and SQL generator. DrawDB is a robust and user friendly database entity relationship diagram (ERD) editor right in your browser. Build diagrams with a few clicks, export and import SQL scripts, generate migrations, customize your editor, and more without creating an account. See the full set of features on here. Getting Started Local Development Build Docker Build If you want to enable sharing, set up the server and environment variables according to .env.sample . This is optional unless you need to share files. Contributing Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for…
read the full drawDB overview →
About mikro-orm
TypeScript ORM for Node.js based on Data Mapper, Unit of Work and Identity Map patterns. Supports MongoDB, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL (including CockroachDB and PGlite), SQLite (including libSQL), MSSQL and Oracle databases. Heavily inspired by Doctrine and Hibernate. Quick Start Install a driver package for your database: If you use additional packages like @mikro orm/cli , @mikro orm/migrations , or @mikro orm/entity generator , install @mikro orm/core explicitly as well. See the quick start guide for details. Define Entities The recommended way to define entities is using defineEntity with setClass : You can…
read the full mikro-orm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is drawDB or mikro-orm more popular?
drawDB has 40,237 GitHub stars and mikro-orm has 9,267. drawDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are drawDB and mikro-orm free?
Both are open source. drawDB is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and mikro-orm under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between drawDB and mikro-orm?
drawDB is written in JavaScript and mikro-orm 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, drawDB or mikro-orm?
Choose drawDB if you want the larger community (40,237 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mikro-orm if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.