head to head · open source
steampipe vs OpenContracts
steampipe has 7,957 GitHub stars, 341 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. OpenContracts has 1,484 stars, 189 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped yesterday. steampipe leads on adoption by 436% (7,957 vs 1,484 stars). steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; OpenContracts is written in Python under MIT. steampipe has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, OpenContracts 13%. OpenContracts was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (etl), 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
| steampipe | OpenContracts | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.0K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 341 | ⑂ 189 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick steampipe if
- You weight community size — 8.0K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OpenContracts if
- You want the OpenContracts feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and OpenContracts fits your workflow better
About steampipe
Steampipe is an AGPL 3.0, Go based zero ETL tool that maps APIs and services to SQL tables, letting anyone who already writes SQL — cloud engineers, DevSecOps and security teams, data engineers — query live data from AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub and Kubernetes without building a pipeline or running a database.
read the full steampipe overview →
About OpenContracts
OpenContracts is an MIT licensed, self hosted document intelligence platform that turns a repository of documents into a programmable citation graph, built for builders and hackers who need a document management system for the agentic world as much as a place to store files.
read the full OpenContracts overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is steampipe or OpenContracts more popular?
steampipe has 7,957 GitHub stars and OpenContracts has 1,484. steampipe has the larger community by that measure.
Are steampipe and OpenContracts free?
Both are open source. steampipe is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and OpenContracts under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between steampipe and OpenContracts?
steampipe is written in Go and OpenContracts in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, steampipe or OpenContracts?
Choose steampipe if you want the larger community (7,957 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose OpenContracts if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.