head to head · open source
orm vs tinydb
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars, 2,605 forks, 2,627 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. tinydb has 7,576 stars, 645 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. orm leads on adoption by 529% (47,661 vs 7,576 stars). orm is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; tinydb is written in Python under MIT. orm has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, tinydb 9%. orm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (database), 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 | tinydb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 645 |
| 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 tinydb if
- You want the tinydb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and tinydb 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 tinydb
.. image:: :height: 150px Quick Links Example Code Supported Python Versions Documentation Changelog Extensions Contributing Introduction TinyDB is a lightweight document oriented database optimized for your happiness :) It's written in pure Python and has no external dependencies. The target are small apps that would be blown away by a SQL DB or an external database server. TinyDB is: tiny: The current source code has 1800 lines of code (with about 40% documentation) and 1600 lines tests. document oriented: Like MongoDB , you can store any document (represented as dict ) in TinyDB. optimized for your happiness…
read the full tinydb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is orm or tinydb more popular?
orm has 47,661 GitHub stars and tinydb has 7,576. orm has the larger community by that measure.
Are orm and tinydb free?
Both are open source. orm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tinydb under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between orm and tinydb?
orm is written in TypeScript and tinydb 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 tinydb?
Choose orm if you want the larger community (47,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tinydb if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.