head to head · open source
shardingsphere vs conduit
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars, 6,900 forks, 197 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conduit has 611 stars, 63 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shardingsphere leads on adoption by 3,304% (20,800 vs 611 stars). shardingsphere is written in Java under Apache-2.0; conduit is written in Go under Apache-2.0. shardingsphere has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, conduit 10%. shardingsphere was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (data-pipeline), 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
| shardingsphere | conduit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 611 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 63 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick shardingsphere if
- You weight community size — 21K 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 conduit if
- You want the conduit 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 conduit fits your workflow better
About shardingsphere
Apache ShardingSphere is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Java based distributed database ecosystem positioned as Database Plus — a standards and enhancement layer that sits above heterogeneous databases so applications can connect to, govern, and compute across them as if they were one database, aimed at enterprise data architects and developers running sharded, multi database estates.
read the full shardingsphere overview →
About conduit
Conduit is an Apache 2.0 licenced data streaming tool written in Go that moves records between production data stores in real time, and it is aimed at data engineers who want Kafka Connect style pipelines without a JVM in the stack.
read the full conduit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shardingsphere or conduit more popular?
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars and conduit has 611. shardingsphere has the larger community by that measure.
Are shardingsphere and conduit free?
Both are open source. shardingsphere is licensed under Apache-2.0 and conduit under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shardingsphere and conduit?
shardingsphere is written in Java and conduit 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, shardingsphere or conduit?
Choose shardingsphere if you want the larger community (20,800 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose conduit if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.