head to head · open source
rocksdb vs juicefs
rocksdb has 32,114 GitHub stars, 6,933 forks, 1,645 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. juicefs has 14,440 stars, 1,290 forks, 203 open issues and last shipped today. rocksdb leads on adoption by 122% (32,114 vs 14,440 stars). rocksdb is written in C++ under GPL-2.0; juicefs is written in Go under Apache-2.0. rocksdb has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, juicefs 9%. juicefs 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 | juicefs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 14K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 juicefs if
- You want the juicefs 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 juicefs fits your workflow better
About rocksdb
RocksDB is an embeddable, persistent key value store written in C++ and developed by the Facebook Database Engineering Team. It is a library rather than a standalone server, and it forms the core building block for a fast key value server. The project builds on earlier work on LevelDB by Sanjay Ghemawat and Jeff Dean, and it lives in the systems infrastructure and database ecosystem, carrying the topics database and storage engine. It has been public for roughly fourteen years and is dual licensed under GPLv2 and Apache 2.0, so a user may select either license at their option.
read the full rocksdb overview →
About juicefs
JuiceFS is a Go based, Apache 2.0 distributed POSIX file system that stores file data in object storage and metadata in a database engine such as Redis, MySQL, SQLite, or TiKV, and it is aimed at cloud native infrastructure, big data, machine learning, and AI workloads.
read the full juicefs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rocksdb or juicefs more popular?
rocksdb has 32,114 GitHub stars and juicefs has 14,440. rocksdb has the larger community by that measure.
Are rocksdb and juicefs free?
Both are open source. rocksdb is licensed under GPL-2.0 and juicefs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rocksdb and juicefs?
rocksdb is written in C++ and juicefs 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, rocksdb or juicefs?
Choose rocksdb if you want the larger community (32,114 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose juicefs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.