head to head · open source
Qdrant vs rocksdb
Qdrant has 34,638 GitHub stars, 2,680 forks, 704 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rocksdb has 32,106 stars, 6,930 forks, 1,645 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Qdrant leads on adoption by 8% (34,638 vs 32,106 stars). Qdrant is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; rocksdb is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. Qdrant has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, rocksdb 22%. rocksdb 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 | rocksdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 32K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 6.9K |
| 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 rocksdb if
- You want the rocksdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and rocksdb 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 rocksdb
RocksDB is an embeddable, persistent key value store written in C++ and developed by the Facebook Database Engineering Team. It is a library rather than a standalone server, and it forms the core building block for a fast key value server. The project builds on earlier work on LevelDB by Sanjay Ghemawat and Jeff Dean, and it lives in the systems infrastructure and database ecosystem, carrying the topics database and storage engine. It has been public for roughly fourteen years and is dual licensed under GPLv2 and Apache 2.0, so a user may select either license at their option.
read the full rocksdb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Qdrant or rocksdb more popular?
Qdrant has 34,638 GitHub stars and rocksdb has 32,106. Qdrant has the larger community by that measure.
Are Qdrant and rocksdb free?
Both are open source. Qdrant is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rocksdb under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Qdrant and rocksdb?
Qdrant is written in Rust and rocksdb in C++. 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 rocksdb?
Choose Qdrant if you want the larger community (34,638 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rocksdb if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.