head to head · open source
steampipe vs OpenContracts
steampipe has 7,994 GitHub stars, 347 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped today. OpenContracts has 1,534 stars, 199 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. steampipe leads on adoption by 421% (7,994 vs 1,534 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%. steampipe 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 | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 347 | ⑂ 199 |
| 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
select from cloud; Steampipe is the zero ETL way to query APIs and services. Use it to expose data sources to SQL. SQL . It's been the data access standard for decades. Live data . Query APIs in real time. Speed . Query APIs faster than you ever thought possible. Concurrency . Query many data sources in parallel. Single binary . Use it locally, deploy it in CI/CD pipelines. Demo time! Documentation See the documentation for: Running queries Managing Steampipe CLI commands Integrations Developing plugins Install Steampipe Install Steampipe from the downloads page: Install a plugin for your favorite service (e.g…
read the full steampipe overview →
About OpenContracts
OpenContracts (Demo) Open source document intelligence you can build on. Point OpenContracts at a repository of documents and get a programmable citation graph — human annotation, structured extraction, AI agents, and a built in MCP server, all behind one API. Self hosted, MIT licensed, and built for teams working at scale. Same graph, three surfaces: a GraphQL + REST API for your apps, a Model Context Protocol server for your agents, and a React UI for your team. From documents to a citation graph — in about a minute Create a corpus, drop in your documents, and click Set up . That one click installs the…
read the full OpenContracts overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is steampipe or OpenContracts more popular?
steampipe has 7,994 GitHub stars and OpenContracts has 1,534. 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 (7,994 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose OpenContracts if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.