head to head · open source
orm vs dbmate
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars, 2,605 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. dbmate has 7,517 stars, 387 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped yesterday. orm leads on adoption by 534% (47,661 vs 7,517 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; dbmate is written in Go under MIT. orm has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, dbmate 5%. dbmate was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (database, mysql, nodejs), 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 | dbmate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 387 |
| 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 dbmate if
- You want the dbmate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dbmate 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 dbmate
Dbmate Dbmate is a database migration tool that will keep your database schema in sync across multiple developers and your production servers. It is a standalone command line tool that can be used with Go, Node.js, Python, Ruby, PHP, Rust, C++, or any other language or framework you are using to write database backed applications. This is especially helpful if you are writing multiple services in different languages, and want to maintain some sanity with consistent development tools. For a comparison between dbmate and other popular database schema migration tools, please see Alternatives. Table of Contents…
read the full dbmate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is orm or dbmate more popular?
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars and dbmate has 7,517. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and dbmate free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbmate under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and dbmate?
orm is written in TypeScript and dbmate in Go. 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 dbmate?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbmate if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.