head to head · open source
NocoDB vs crystal
NocoDB has 65,408 GitHub stars, 5,131 forks, 710 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crystal has 12,936 stars, 632 forks, 169 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NocoDB leads on adoption by 406% (65,408 vs 12,936 stars). NocoDB is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; crystal is written in TypeScript under MIT. NocoDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, crystal 5%. crystal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (automatic-api), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| NocoDB | crystal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 13K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.1K | ⑂ 632 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick NocoDB if
- You weight community size — 65K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crystal if
- You want the crystal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and crystal fits your workflow better
About NocoDB
NocoDB is the fastest and easiest way to build databases online. Website • Discord • Community • Twitter • Reddit • Documentation See other languages » Join Our Community Installation Docker with SQLite Docker with PG Auto upstall Auto upstall is a single command that sets up NocoDB on a server for production usage. Behind the scenes it auto generates docker compose for you. bash bash install.nocodb.com/noco.sh script can be found here in our github Other Methods Binaries are only for quick testing locally. When running locally access nocodb by visiting: For more installation methods, please refer to our docs…
read the full NocoDB overview →
About crystal
🔮 Graphile's Crystal Monorepo At Graphile we love GraphQL so much we named ourself for our love of it! This repository houses many of the Graphile packages that relate to GraphQL (or relate to the packages that relate to GraphQL, or relate to those package...); the two headline projects are Gra fast and PostGraphile but there's many other packages, a fair few of which can be used independently see below for more details. [Grafast][grafast] : A cutting edge planning and execution engine for GraphQL.js ─ use this as a drop in replacement for the execute method from GraphQL.js and by moving from traditional…
read the full crystal overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is NocoDB or crystal more popular?
NocoDB has 65,408 GitHub stars and crystal has 12,936. NocoDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are NocoDB and crystal free?
Both are open source. NocoDB has no licence declared in this registry, and crystal is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between NocoDB and crystal?
NocoDB is written in TypeScript and crystal 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, NocoDB or crystal?
Choose NocoDB if you want the larger community (65,408 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose crystal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.