head to head · open source
rocksdb vs juicefs
rocksdb has 32,240 GitHub stars, 7,008 forks, 1,645 open issues and last shipped yesterday. juicefs has 14,642 stars, 1,339 forks, 203 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rocksdb leads on adoption by 120% (32,240 vs 14,642 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 | ★ 15K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 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: 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 juicefs
JuiceFS is a high performance POSIX file system released under Apache License 2.0, particularly designed for the cloud native environment. The data, stored via JuiceFS, will be persisted in Object Storage (e.g. Amazon S3) , and the corresponding metadata can be persisted in various compatible database engines such as Redis, MySQL, and TiKV based on the scenarios and requirements. With JuiceFS, massive cloud storage can be directly connected to big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and various application platforms in production environments. Without modifying code, the massive cloud storage can be…
read the full juicefs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rocksdb or juicefs more popular?
rocksdb has 32,240 GitHub stars and juicefs has 14,642. 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 (32,240 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.