head to head · open source
orm vs sequelize
orm has 47,664 GitHub stars, 2,634 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sequelize has 30,343 stars, 4,486 forks, 1,080 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. orm leads on adoption by 57% (47,664 vs 30,343 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; sequelize is written in TypeScript under MIT. orm has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, sequelize 15%. orm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 6 topic tags (javascript, mariadb, mssql, 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 | sequelize | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 30K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 4.5K |
| 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 sequelize if
- You want the sequelize feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sequelize 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 sequelize
Sequelize Sequelize is an easy to use and promise based Node.js ORM tool for Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Snowflake, Oracle DB and Db2 for IBM i. It features solid transaction support, relations, eager and lazy loading, read replication and more. Would you like to contribute? Read our contribution guidelines to know more. There are many ways to help! 😃 🚀 Seeking New Maintainers for Sequelize! 🚀 We're looking for new maintainers to help finalize and release the next major version of Sequelize! If you're passionate about open source and database ORMs, we'd love to have you…
read the full sequelize overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is orm or sequelize more popular?
orm has 47,664 GitHub stars and sequelize has 30,343. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and sequelize free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sequelize under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and sequelize?
orm is written in TypeScript and sequelize in TypeScript. 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 sequelize?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,664 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sequelize if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.