head to head · open source
orm vs tbls
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars, 2,605 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. tbls has 4,370 stars, 217 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. orm leads on adoption by 991% (47,661 vs 4,370 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; tbls is written in Go under MIT. orm has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, tbls 5%. orm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (mariadb), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| orm | tbls | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 217 |
| 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 tbls if
- You want the tbls feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tbls 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 tbls
tbls (pronounced /ˈteɪbl̩z/) is a CI Friendly tool to document a database, written in Go. Key features of tbls are: Document a database automatically in GFM format. Output database schema in many formats. Single binary = CI Friendly. Support many databases. Work as linter for database Table of Contents Quick Start Install Getting Started Document a database Diff database and (document or database) Lint a database Measure document coverage Continuous Integration Configuration Name Description Labels DSN Support Datasource Document path Document format ER diagram Filter tables Lint Comments Relations Viewpoints…
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is orm or tbls more popular?
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars and tbls has 4,370. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and tbls free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tbls under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and tbls?
orm is written in TypeScript and tbls 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 tbls?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tbls if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.