head to head · open source
realtime vs pgsync
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars, 468 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pgsync has 1,421 stars, 212 forks, 216 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. realtime leads on adoption by 437% (7,635 vs 1,421 stars). realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0; pgsync is written in Python under MIT. realtime has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, pgsync 15%. realtime was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (change-data-capture, 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 | pgsync | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.6K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Elixir | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 468 | ⑂ 212 |
| 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 pgsync if
- You want the pgsync feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pgsync 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 pgsync
PGSync is a change data capture tool that syncs PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MariaDB to Elasticsearch or OpenSearch in real time, aimed at teams that want to keep a relational database as the source of truth while serving fast search from a separate index.
read the full pgsync overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is realtime or pgsync more popular?
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars and pgsync has 1,421. realtime has the larger community by that measure.
Are realtime and pgsync free?
Both are open source. realtime is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pgsync under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between realtime and pgsync?
realtime is written in Elixir and pgsync 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 pgsync?
Choose realtime if you want the larger community (7,635 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pgsync if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.