head to head · open source
realtime vs OpenContracts
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars, 468 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. OpenContracts has 1,484 stars, 189 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped yesterday. realtime leads on adoption by 414% (7,635 vs 1,484 stars). realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0; OpenContracts is written in Python under MIT. realtime has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, OpenContracts 13%. OpenContracts 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 | OpenContracts | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.6K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Elixir | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 468 | ⑂ 189 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick realtime if
- You weight community size — 7.6K 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 OpenContracts if
- You want the OpenContracts feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and OpenContracts fits your workflow better
About realtime
Supabase Realtime is a server built with Elixir on the Phoenix Framework that pushes three kinds of realtime functionality to browser and server clients over WebSockets. It lives in the Supabase ecosystem, where it acts as the realtime layer alongside Postgres, and it is distributed as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. The project has been public for roughly seven years, carries 7,632 stars and 463 forks, and its topic list places it in the company of change data capture, CRDT, distributed systems, pubsub, and PostgreSQL tooling.
read the full realtime overview →
About OpenContracts
OpenContracts is an MIT licensed, self hosted document intelligence platform that turns a repository of documents into a programmable citation graph, built for builders and hackers who need a document management system for the agentic world as much as a place to store files.
read the full OpenContracts overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is realtime or OpenContracts more popular?
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars and OpenContracts has 1,484. realtime has the larger community by that measure.
Are realtime and OpenContracts free?
Both are open source. realtime is licensed under Apache-2.0 and OpenContracts under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between realtime and OpenContracts?
realtime is written in Elixir and OpenContracts 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 OpenContracts?
Choose realtime if you want the larger community (7,635 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose OpenContracts if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.