head to head · open source
realtime vs whodb
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars, 468 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. whodb has 5,033 stars, 240 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped today. realtime leads on adoption by 52% (7,635 vs 5,033 stars). realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0; whodb is written in Go under Apache-2.0. realtime has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, whodb 5%. whodb 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 | whodb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.6K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Elixir | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 468 | ⑂ 240 |
| 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 whodb if
- You want the whodb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and whodb 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 whodb
WhoDB is an Apache 2.0, Go based open source data workspace that gives users one place to explore databases, edit data, run queries, and understand how a schema fits together. It runs in the browser, is available as a desktop application, and also provides a terminal CLI, so it fits the open source data engineering and integration ecosystem for internal tools, data platforms, database management, data governance, data integration, data pipelines, data catalogs, data lineage, and ER diagrams.
read the full whodb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is realtime or whodb more popular?
realtime has 7,635 GitHub stars and whodb has 5,033. realtime has the larger community by that measure.
Are realtime and whodb free?
Both are open source. realtime is licensed under Apache-2.0 and whodb under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between realtime and whodb?
realtime is written in Elixir and whodb 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 whodb?
Choose realtime if you want the larger community (7,635 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose whodb if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.