head to head · open source
seatunnel vs realtime
seatunnel has 9,657 GitHub stars, 2,416 forks, 705 open issues and last shipped today. realtime has 7,635 stars, 468 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. seatunnel leads on adoption by 26% (9,657 vs 7,635 stars). seatunnel is written in Java under Apache-2.0; realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0. seatunnel has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, realtime 6%. seatunnel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cdc, change-data-capture), 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
| seatunnel | realtime | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.7K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 468 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick seatunnel if
- You weight community size — 9.7K 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 realtime if
- You want the realtime feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You evaluated both and realtime fits your workflow better
About seatunnel
Apache SeaTunnel is a multimodal, high performance, distributed data integration tool that is capable of synchronizing vast amounts of data daily. It is an Apache Software Foundation project written in Java and released under the Apache 2.0 license, with a home on the web at seatunnel.apache.org. The project has been in development for roughly nine years and has accumulated 9,652 stars and 2,407 forks on GitHub. It sits in the Data & Analytics ecosystem, specifically in data engineering and integration, and it is built around a connector driven model: sources, sinks, and transforms are configured as jobs, and tho…
read the full seatunnel overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is seatunnel or realtime more popular?
seatunnel has 9,657 GitHub stars and realtime has 7,635. seatunnel has the larger community by that measure.
Are seatunnel and realtime free?
Both are open source. seatunnel is licensed under Apache-2.0 and realtime under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between seatunnel and realtime?
seatunnel is written in Java and realtime in Elixir. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, seatunnel or realtime?
Choose seatunnel if you want the larger community (9,657 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose realtime if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.