head to head · open source
orm vs FerretDB
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars, 2,605 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. FerretDB has 11,112 stars, 494 forks, 448 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. orm leads on adoption by 329% (47,661 vs 11,112 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; FerretDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0. orm has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, FerretDB 4%. orm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (database, mongodb, postgres), 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 | FerretDB | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-06-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 494 |
| 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 FerretDB if
- You want the FerretDB feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and FerretDB 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 FerretDB
FerretDB [!TIP] Looking for FerretDB v1? It is there. FerretDB is an open source alternative to MongoDB. It is a proxy that converts MongoDB 5.0+ wire protocol queries to SQL and uses PostgreSQL with DocumentDB extension as a database engine. Why do we need FerretDB? MongoDB was originally an eye opening technology for many of us developers, empowering us to build applications faster than using relational databases. In its early days, its ease to use and well documented drivers made MongoDB one of the simplest database solutions available. However, as time passed, MongoDB abandoned its open source roots…
read the full FerretDB overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is orm or FerretDB more popular?
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars and FerretDB has 11,112. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and FerretDB free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and FerretDB under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and FerretDB?
orm is written in TypeScript and FerretDB 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 FerretDB?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose FerretDB if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.