head to head · open source
realtime vs docetl
realtime has 7,675 GitHub stars, 479 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. docetl has 4,195 stars, 463 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. realtime leads on adoption by 83% (7,675 vs 4,195 stars). realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0; docetl is written in Python under MIT. realtime has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, docetl 11%. realtime 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
| realtime | docetl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.7K | ★ 4.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Elixir | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 479 | ⑂ 463 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick realtime if
- You weight community size — 7.7K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick docetl if
- You want the docetl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and docetl fits your workflow better
About realtime
Supabase Realtime Send ephemeral messages, track and synchronize shared state, and listen to Postgres changes all over WebSockets. Examples · Request Features · Report Bugs Status This repository focuses on version 2 but you can still access the previous version's code and Docker image. For the latest Docker images go to The codebase is under heavy development and the documentation is constantly evolving. Give it a try and let us know what you think by creating an issue. Watch releases of this repo to get notified of updates. And give us a star if you like it! Overview What is this? This is a server built with…
read the full realtime overview →
About docetl
DocETL: Declarative & Agentic Map Reduce What is DocETL · Install · Python API · YAML · DocWrangler UI · Docs What is DocETL DocETL helps you process large collections of data (structured and unstructured) with LLMs. You write each operation in natural language, e.g., "pull out every complaint in this ticket," and DocETL provides the operators you need (map, reduce, filter, and more) and orchestrates them, parallelizing work across your data, optimizes your pipeline automatically, swapping models, rewriting prompts, decomposing operations, and replacing subtasks with code wherever possible, to raise accuracy and…
read the full docetl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is realtime or docetl more popular?
realtime has 7,675 GitHub stars and docetl has 4,195. realtime has the larger community by that measure.
Are realtime and docetl free?
Both are open source. realtime is licensed under Apache-2.0 and docetl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between realtime and docetl?
realtime is written in Elixir and docetl in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, realtime or docetl?
Choose realtime if you want the larger community (7,675 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose docetl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.