head to head · open source
orm vs pony
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars, 2,605 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pony has 3,820 stars, 258 forks, 358 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. orm leads on adoption by 1,148% (47,661 vs 3,820 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; pony is written in Python under Apache-2.0. orm has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, pony 7%. orm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (cockroachdb, mysql, orm), 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 | pony | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-08-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 258 |
| 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 pony if
- You want the pony feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pony 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 pony
Downloads Pony Object Relational Mapper ============================= Pony is an advanced object relational mapper. The most interesting feature of Pony is its ability to write queries to the database using Python generator expressions and lambdas. Pony analyzes the abstract syntax tree of the expression and translates it into a SQL query. Here is an example query in Pony: Pony translates queries to SQL using a specific database dialect. Currently Pony works with SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle databases. By providing a Pythonic API, Pony facilitates fast app development. Pony is an easy to learn and easy…
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Frequently asked questions
Is orm or pony more popular?
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars and pony has 3,820. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and pony free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pony under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and pony?
orm is written in TypeScript and pony 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, orm or pony?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pony if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.