head to head · open source
seatunnel vs sycamore
seatunnel has 9,657 GitHub stars, 2,416 forks, 705 open issues and last shipped today. sycamore has 608 stars, 72 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. seatunnel leads on adoption by 1,488% (9,657 vs 608 stars). seatunnel is written in Java under Apache-2.0; sycamore is written in Python under Apache-2.0. seatunnel has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, sycamore 12%. seatunnel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llm), 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
| seatunnel | sycamore | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.7K | ★ 608 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-08-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 72 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick seatunnel if
- You weight community size — 9.7K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sycamore if
- You want the sycamore feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and sycamore fits your workflow better
About seatunnel
Apache SeaTunnel is a multimodal, high performance, distributed data integration tool that is capable of synchronizing vast amounts of data daily. It is an Apache Software Foundation project written in Java and released under the Apache 2.0 license, with a home on the web at seatunnel.apache.org. The project has been in development for roughly nine years and has accumulated 9,652 stars and 2,407 forks on GitHub. It sits in the Data & Analytics ecosystem, specifically in data engineering and integration, and it is built around a connector driven model: sources, sinks, and transforms are configured as jobs, and tho…
read the full seatunnel overview →
About sycamore
Sycamore is an open source, AI powered document processing engine for ETL, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), LLM applications, and analytics on unstructured data, aimed at Python data engineers and AI developers who must turn reports, presentations, transcripts, and manuals into clean, chunked, searchable records.
read the full sycamore overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is seatunnel or sycamore more popular?
seatunnel has 9,657 GitHub stars and sycamore has 608. seatunnel has the larger community by that measure.
Are seatunnel and sycamore free?
Both are open source. seatunnel is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sycamore under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between seatunnel and sycamore?
seatunnel is written in Java and sycamore in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, seatunnel or sycamore?
Choose seatunnel if you want the larger community (9,657 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sycamore if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.