head to head · open source
drawDB vs sequelize
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars, 3,350 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sequelize has 30,343 stars, 4,486 forks, 1,080 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. drawDB leads on adoption by 33% (40,223 vs 30,343 stars). drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; sequelize is written in TypeScript under MIT. drawDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, sequelize 15%. drawDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (mariadb), 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
| drawDB | sequelize | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 30K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 4.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick drawDB if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sequelize if
- You want the sequelize feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sequelize fits your workflow better
About drawDB
drawDB Free, simple, and intuitive database schema editor and SQL generator. DrawDB is a robust and user friendly database entity relationship diagram (ERD) editor right in your browser. Build diagrams with a few clicks, export and import SQL scripts, generate migrations, customize your editor, and more without creating an account. See the full set of features on here. Getting Started Local Development Build Docker Build If you want to enable sharing, set up the server and environment variables according to .env.sample . This is optional unless you need to share files. Contributing Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for…
read the full drawDB overview →
About sequelize
Sequelize Sequelize is an easy to use and promise based Node.js ORM tool for Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Snowflake, Oracle DB and Db2 for IBM i. It features solid transaction support, relations, eager and lazy loading, read replication and more. Would you like to contribute? Read our contribution guidelines to know more. There are many ways to help! 😃 🚀 Seeking New Maintainers for Sequelize! 🚀 We're looking for new maintainers to help finalize and release the next major version of Sequelize! If you're passionate about open source and database ORMs, we'd love to have you…
read the full sequelize overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is drawDB or sequelize more popular?
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars and sequelize has 30,343. drawDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are drawDB and sequelize free?
Both are open source. drawDB is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and sequelize under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between drawDB and sequelize?
drawDB is written in JavaScript and sequelize in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, drawDB or sequelize?
Choose drawDB if you want the larger community (40,223 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sequelize if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.