head to head · open source
orm vs dbal
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars, 2,605 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. dbal has 9,699 stars, 1,376 forks, 304 open issues and last shipped yesterday. orm leads on adoption by 391% (47,661 vs 9,699 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; dbal is written in PHP under MIT. orm has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, dbal 14%. dbal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (database, mariadb, mysql), 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
| orm | dbal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 9.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick orm if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dbal if
- You want the dbal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and dbal fits your workflow better
About orm
Docs Discord X Blog Post Architecture Using Prisma 7? It remains fully supported. Its source lives on the v7 branch of this repository and its docs at prisma.io/docs/orm/v7. Prisma 8 is a release candidate. 8.0.0 final is expected in the next four to eight weeks. Until then a release candidate may include breaking changes, and every release ships with an upgrade recipe that the prisma 8 skill applies for you. The candidate is a complete implementation we stand behind: we treat bugs in it as urgent, and the risk you take on is a feature that is not built yet rather than churn. The feature scoreboard names every…
About dbal
Doctrine DBAL Powerful D ata B ase A bstraction L ayer with many features for database schema introspection and schema management. More resources: Website Documentation Issue Tracker [Coverage 5.0 image]: [5.0]: [CodeCov 5.0]: [GA 5.0]: [GA 5.0 image]: [Coverage 4.5 image]: [4.5]: [CodeCov 4.5]: [GA 4.5]: [GA 4.5 image]: [Coverage 4.4 image]: [4.4]: [CodeCov 4.4]: [GA 4.4]: [GA 4.4 image]: [Coverage 3.10 image]: [3.10]: [CodeCov 3.10]: [GA 3.10]: [GA 3.10 image]:
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Frequently asked questions
Is orm or dbal more popular?
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars and dbal has 9,699. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and dbal free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and dbal?
orm is written in TypeScript and dbal in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, orm or dbal?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.