head to head · open source
realtime vs peerdb
realtime has 7,675 GitHub stars, 479 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. peerdb has 3,314 stars, 232 forks, 204 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. realtime leads on adoption by 132% (7,675 vs 3,314 stars). realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0; peerdb is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. realtime has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, peerdb 7%. realtime was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (cdc, distributed-systems, postgres, postgresql), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | peerdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.7K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Elixir | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 479 | ⑂ 232 |
| 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 peerdb if
- You want the peerdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and peerdb 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 peerdb
Frustratingly simple ETL for Postgres PeerDB At PeerDB, we are building a fast, simple and the most cost effective way to stream data from Postgres to Data Warehouses, Queues and Storage engines. If you are running Postgres at the heart of your data stack and move data at scale from Postgres to any of the above targets, PeerDB can provide value. We support different modes of streaming log based (CDC), cursor based (timestamp or integer) and XMIN based. Performance wise, we are 10x faster than existing tools. Features wise, we support native Postgres features such as comprehensive set of data types incl…
read the full peerdb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is realtime or peerdb more popular?
realtime has 7,675 GitHub stars and peerdb has 3,314. realtime has the larger community by that measure.
Are realtime and peerdb free?
Both are open source. realtime is licensed under Apache-2.0 and peerdb under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between realtime and peerdb?
realtime is written in Elixir and peerdb 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, realtime or peerdb?
Choose realtime if you want the larger community (7,675 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose peerdb if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.