head to head · open source
Qdrant vs lowdb
Qdrant has 34,694 GitHub stars, 2,685 forks, 704 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lowdb has 22,580 stars, 962 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Qdrant leads on adoption by 54% (34,694 vs 22,580 stars). Qdrant is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; lowdb is written in JavaScript under MIT. Qdrant has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, lowdb 4%. Qdrant was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Qdrant | lowdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-03-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 962 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Qdrant if
- You weight community size — 35K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick lowdb if
- You want the lowdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and lowdb fits your workflow better
About Qdrant
Qdrant is a vector similarity search engine and database built in Rust, designed for production use in AI applications. It stores, manages, and retrieves high dimensional vectors alongside associated metadata (payloads), supporting fast nearest neighbor search with filtering. It solves the problem of efficiently performing semantic or neural based matching at scale—such as finding similar images, recommending content, or powering retrieval augmented generation (RAG)—by replacing slow or inflexible brute force or index based approaches with a purpose built engine optimized for vector operations.…
read the full Qdrant overview →
About lowdb
lowdb is a small, MIT licensed embedded JSON database for JavaScript and TypeScript that persists data to a plain db.json file, aimed at Node.js, Electron, and browser projects that need local storage without running a database server.
read the full lowdb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Qdrant or lowdb more popular?
Qdrant has 34,694 GitHub stars and lowdb has 22,580. Qdrant has the larger community by that measure.
Are Qdrant and lowdb free?
Both are open source. Qdrant is licensed under Apache-2.0 and lowdb under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Qdrant and lowdb?
Qdrant is written in Rust and lowdb in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Qdrant or lowdb?
Choose Qdrant if you want the larger community (34,694 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lowdb if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.