head to head · open source
QuestDB vs cayley
QuestDB has 17,496 GitHub stars, 1,685 forks, 952 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cayley has 15,067 stars, 1,234 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. QuestDB leads on adoption by 16% (17,496 vs 15,067 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 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
English 简体中文 QuestDB is the open source, low latency time series database on open formats. It ingests millions of events per second, computes on live data in milliseconds, and keeps years of history queryable. One SQL engine spans ingestion, stream processing, and tiered storage. The engine is zero GC Java with C++ and Rust on the hot paths. Data lives in memory mapped, time partitioned columns. Queries run across all cores with SIMD and JIT compiled filters. There are no third party dependencies on the data path. Storage is tiered: a parallel write ahead log, native columnar partitions, and Apache Parquet. In…
read the full QuestDB overview →
About cayley
Cayley is an open source database for Linked Data. It is inspired by the graph database behind Google's Knowledge Graph (formerly Freebase)). Documentation Features Built in query editor, visualizer and REPL Multiple query languages: Gizmo: query language inspired by Gremlin GraphQL inspired query language MQL: simplified version for Freebase) fans Modular: easy to connect to your favorite programming languages and back end stores Production ready: well tested and used by various companies for their production workloads Fast: optimized specifically for usage in applications Performance Rough performance testing…
read the full cayley overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is QuestDB or cayley more popular?
QuestDB has 17,496 GitHub stars and cayley has 15,067. 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 (17,496 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.