head to head · open source
drawDB vs postgrest
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars, 3,350 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. postgrest has 27,740 stars, 1,234 forks, 400 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. drawDB leads on adoption by 45% (40,223 vs 27,740 stars). drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; postgrest is written in Haskell under MIT. drawDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, postgrest 4%. drawDB 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
| drawDB | postgrest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 28K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Haskell |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick drawDB if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick postgrest if
- You want the postgrest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- You evaluated both and postgrest fits your workflow better
About drawDB
drawDB Free, simple, and intuitive database schema editor and SQL generator. DrawDB is a robust and user friendly database entity relationship diagram (ERD) editor right in your browser. Build diagrams with a few clicks, export and import SQL scripts, generate migrations, customize your editor, and more without creating an account. See the full set of features on here. Getting Started Local Development Build Docker Build If you want to enable sharing, set up the server and environment variables according to .env.sample . This is optional unless you need to share files. Contributing Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for…
read the full drawDB overview →
About postgrest
PostgREST serves a fully RESTful API from any existing PostgreSQL database. It provides a cleaner, more standards compliant, faster API than you are likely to write from scratch. Sponsors Big thanks to our sponsors! You can join them by supporting PostgREST on Patreon. Usage 1. See the docs for how to install PostgREST on your platform. You can also use Docker. 2. Invoke for help: Documentation Latest documentation is at postgrest.org. You can contribute to the docs in PostgREST/postgrest/docs. Performance TLDR; subsecond response times for up to 2000 requests/sec on Heroku free tier. If you're used to servers…
read the full postgrest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is drawDB or postgrest more popular?
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars and postgrest has 27,740. drawDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are drawDB and postgrest free?
Both are open source. drawDB is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and postgrest under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between drawDB and postgrest?
drawDB is written in JavaScript and postgrest in Haskell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, drawDB or postgrest?
Choose drawDB if you want the larger community (40,223 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose postgrest if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.