head to head · open source
orm vs sea-orm
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars, 2,605 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sea-orm has 9,947 stars, 746 forks, 234 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. orm leads on adoption by 379% (47,661 vs 9,947 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; sea-orm is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. orm has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, sea-orm 7%. orm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (database, mariadb, 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 | sea-orm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 746 |
| 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 sea-orm if
- You want the sea-orm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and sea-orm 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 sea-orm
SeaORM is a powerful ORM for building web services in Rust Support us with a ⭐ ! 🐚 SeaORM 中文文档 Advanced Relations Model complex relationships 1 1, 1 N, M N, and even self referential in a high level, conceptual way. Familiar Concepts Inspired by popular ORMs in the Ruby, Python, and Node.js ecosystem, SeaORM offers a developer experience that feels instantly recognizable. Feature Rich SeaORM is a batteries included ORM with filters, pagination, and nested queries to accelerate building REST, GraphQL, and gRPC APIs. Production Ready With 250k+ weekly downloads, SeaORM is production ready, trusted by startups and…
read the full sea-orm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is orm or sea-orm more popular?
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars and sea-orm has 9,947. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and sea-orm free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sea-orm under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and sea-orm?
orm is written in TypeScript and sea-orm in Rust. 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 sea-orm?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sea-orm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.