head to head · open source
rocksdb vs Activeloop
rocksdb has 32,241 GitHub stars, 7,007 forks, 1,645 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Activeloop has 9,264 stars, 725 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. rocksdb leads on adoption by 248% (32,241 vs 9,264 stars). rocksdb is written in C++ under GPL-2.0; Activeloop is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. rocksdb has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, Activeloop 8%. rocksdb 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
| rocksdb | Activeloop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-05-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 725 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rocksdb if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Activeloop if
- You want the Activeloop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Activeloop fits your workflow better
About rocksdb
RocksDB: A Persistent Key Value Store for Flash and RAM Storage RocksDB is developed and maintained by Facebook Database Engineering Team. It is built on earlier work on LevelDB by Sanjay Ghemawat (sanjay@google.com) and Jeff Dean (jeff@google.com) This code is a library that forms the core building block for a fast key value server, especially suited for storing data on flash drives. It has a Log Structured Merge Database (LSM) design with flexible tradeoffs between Write Amplification Factor (WAF), Read Amplification Factor (RAF) and Space Amplification Factor (SAF). It has multi threaded compactions, making…
read the full rocksdb overview →
About Activeloop
Deep Lake: Database for AI Docs • Get Started • API Reference • LangChain & VectorDBs Course • Blog • Whitepaper • Slack • Twitter What is Deep Lake? Deep Lake is a Database for AI powered by a storage format optimized for deep learning applications. Deep Lake can be used for: 1. Storing and searching data plus vectors while building LLM applications 2. Managing datasets while training deep learning models Deep Lake simplifies the deployment of enterprise grade LLM based products by offering storage for all data types (embeddings, audio, text, videos, images, dicom, pdfs…
read the full Activeloop overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rocksdb or Activeloop more popular?
rocksdb has 32,241 GitHub stars and Activeloop has 9,264. rocksdb has the larger community by that measure.
Are rocksdb and Activeloop free?
Both are open source. rocksdb is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Activeloop under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rocksdb and Activeloop?
rocksdb is written in C++ and Activeloop in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, rocksdb or Activeloop?
Choose rocksdb if you want the larger community (32,241 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose Activeloop if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.