head to head · open source
NHost vs Bear
NHost has 9,296 GitHub stars, 623 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped today. Bear has 6,493 stars, 369 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. NHost leads on adoption by 43% (9,296 vs 6,493 stars). NHost is written in Go under MIT; Bear is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. NHost has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Bear 6%. NHost 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
| NHost | Bear | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.3K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 623 | ⑂ 369 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick NHost if
- You weight community size — 9.3K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Bear if
- You want the Bear feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Bear fits your workflow better
About NHost
Nhost is an open source backend as a service platform for modern application development, and the project describes itself as a Firebase alternative with GraphQL. It is built around PostgreSQL for data, Hasura for an instant GraphQL API, authentication, storage, and serverless functions written in Node.js with JavaScript or TypeScript. The project is distributed under the MIT license and is positioned in the developer tools category for build and deployment.
read the full NHost overview →
About Bear
Bear is a GPL 3.0, Rust based command line tool that produces a compile commands.json compilation database for any C or C++ build by recording the compiler invocations that run during it, and it is aimed at developers, code explorers, and CI jobs whose build systems cannot emit that database on their own.
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Frequently asked questions
Is NHost or Bear more popular?
NHost has 9,296 GitHub stars and Bear has 6,493. NHost has the larger community by that measure.
Are NHost and Bear free?
Both are open source. NHost is licensed under MIT and Bear under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NHost and Bear?
NHost is written in Go and Bear in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, NHost or Bear?
Choose NHost if you want the larger community (9,296 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Bear if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.