head to head · open source
postgrest vs martin
postgrest has 27,739 GitHub stars, 1,236 forks, 400 open issues and last shipped yesterday. martin has 4,046 stars, 412 forks, 52 open issues and last shipped yesterday. postgrest leads on adoption by 586% (27,739 vs 4,046 stars). postgrest is written in Haskell under MIT; martin is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. postgrest has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, martin 10%. postgrest was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (postgresql), 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
| postgrest | martin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Haskell | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 412 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick postgrest if
- You weight community size — 28K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick martin if
- You want the martin 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 martin fits your workflow better
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 →
About martin
Martin is a tile server and a set of tools able to generate vector tiles on the fly from large PostgreSQL databases and GeoJSON files, and serve tiles from PMTiles and MBTiles files. It can also serve vector tiles from GeoParquet files via DuckDB (unstable). Martin optimizes for speed and heavy traffic, and is written in Rust. Features Serve vector tiles from PostGIS databases, automatically discovering compatible tables and functions PMTile, both local files and over HTTP MBTile files GeoJSON files, converted to vector tiles on the fly GeoParquet files via DuckDB, converted to vector tiles on the fly (unstable)…
read the full martin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is postgrest or martin more popular?
postgrest has 27,739 GitHub stars and martin has 4,046. postgrest has the larger community by that measure.
Are postgrest and martin free?
Both are open source. postgrest is licensed under MIT and martin under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between postgrest and martin?
postgrest is written in Haskell and martin 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, postgrest or martin?
Choose postgrest if you want the larger community (27,739 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose martin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.