head to head · open source
dbt vs roapi
dbt has 14,118 GitHub stars, 2,661 forks, 1,534 open issues and last shipped yesterday. roapi has 3,435 stars, 211 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. dbt leads on adoption by 311% (14,118 vs 3,435 stars). dbt is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; roapi is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. dbt has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, roapi 6%. dbt was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (analytics), 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
| dbt | roapi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-03-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 211 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick dbt if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick roapi if
- You want the roapi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and roapi fits your workflow better
About dbt
[!WARNING] dbt v1 development has moved to the 1.latest branch. The main branch now contains all the Apache 2.0 source code of dbt v2.0 — a ground up rewrite of dbt in Rust. If you're looking for the v1 Python implementation of the dbt framework, switch to 1.latest . dbt enables data analysts and engineers to transform their data using the same practices that software engineers use to build applications. About dbt v2.0 🚧 dbt v2.0 is in beta. Behavior, APIs, and on disk formats may change before the stable release. dbt v2.0 is engineered for performance at scale. It parses, compiles, and runs projects in a…
About roapi
ROAPI ROAPI automatically spins up read only APIs for static datasets without requiring you to write a single line of code. It builds on top of Apache Arrow and Datafusion. The core of its design can be boiled down to the following: Query frontends to translate SQL, FlightSQL, GraphQL and REST API queries into Datafusion plans. Datafusion for query plan execution. Data layer to load datasets from a variety of sources and formats with automatic schema inference. Response encoding layer to serialize intermediate Arrow record batch into various formats requested by client. See below for a high level diagram…
read the full roapi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is dbt or roapi more popular?
dbt has 14,118 GitHub stars and roapi has 3,435. dbt has the larger community by that measure.
Are dbt and roapi free?
Both are open source. dbt is licensed under Apache-2.0 and roapi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between dbt and roapi?
dbt is written in Rust and roapi in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, dbt or roapi?
Choose dbt if you want the larger community (14,118 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose roapi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.