head to head · open source
QuestDB vs cayley
QuestDB has 17,326 GitHub stars, 1,647 forks, 952 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cayley has 15,064 stars, 1,238 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. QuestDB leads on adoption by 15% (17,326 vs 15,064 stars). QuestDB is written in Java under Apache-2.0; cayley is written in Go under Apache-2.0. QuestDB has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, cayley 8%. QuestDB 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
| QuestDB | cayley | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick QuestDB if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cayley if
- You want the cayley feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cayley fits your workflow better
About QuestDB
QuestDB open source time series database. Java, Apache 2.0, category Infrastructure & Operations / Databases. Lives in open source database ecosystem for massive data scale, low latency, real time analytics.
read the full QuestDB overview →
About cayley
Cayley is an open source graph database written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It stores and queries Linked Data, the graph shaped data model standardized by the W3C for the Semantic Web, and its design takes direct inspiration from the graph database that sat behind Google's Knowledge Graph, formerly known as Freebase. The project lives in the Go ecosystem and has been maintained in public for roughly twelve years, accumulating about 15,000 stars and 1,238 forks, with 93 open issues at the time of writing. Its topics — cayley, go, graph, graph database, linked data — describe both the language …
read the full cayley overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is QuestDB or cayley more popular?
QuestDB has 17,326 GitHub stars and cayley has 15,064. QuestDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are QuestDB and cayley free?
Both are open source. QuestDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cayley under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between QuestDB and cayley?
QuestDB is written in Java and cayley in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, QuestDB or cayley?
Choose QuestDB if you want the larger community (17,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cayley if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.