head to head · open source
TiDB vs Qdrant
TiDB has 40,541 GitHub stars, 6,242 forks, 6,976 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Qdrant has 34,638 stars, 2,680 forks, 704 open issues and last shipped yesterday. TiDB leads on adoption by 17% (40,541 vs 34,638 stars). TiDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Qdrant is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. TiDB has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Qdrant 8%. TiDB 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
| TiDB | Qdrant | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 35K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick TiDB if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Qdrant if
- You want the Qdrant 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 Qdrant fits your workflow better
About TiDB
TiDB is an open source, cloud native, distributed SQL database written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0, aimed at teams that need ACID transactions, real time analytics, and vector search at scale without data silos.
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is TiDB or Qdrant more popular?
TiDB has 40,541 GitHub stars and Qdrant has 34,638. TiDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are TiDB and Qdrant free?
Both are open source. TiDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Qdrant under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between TiDB and Qdrant?
TiDB is written in Go and Qdrant 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, TiDB or Qdrant?
Choose TiDB if you want the larger community (40,541 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Qdrant if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.