head to head · open source
Cube vs shardingsphere
Cube has 21,147 GitHub stars, 2,179 forks, 1,185 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shardingsphere has 20,817 stars, 6,906 forks, 197 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cube leads on adoption by 2% (21,147 vs 20,817 stars). Cube is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; shardingsphere is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Cube has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, shardingsphere 33%. Cube 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
| Cube | shardingsphere | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 21K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 6.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cube if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick shardingsphere if
- You want the shardingsphere feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and shardingsphere fits your workflow better
About Cube
Website • Docs • Examples • Blog • Slack • X Cube Core is the open source semantic layer. Define metrics, dimensions, joins, and access rules once in code, then expose them through SQL, REST, and GraphQL APIs to anything downstream — BI tools, custom applications, or AI agents. Cube Core is headless: it doesn't ship a UI, so you can build the analytics experience that fits your product. Cube Core works with all SQL data sources, including cloud data warehouses like Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery; query engines like Presto and Amazon Athena; and application databases like Postgres. It has a built in…
About shardingsphere
Apache ShardingSphere Enterprise Distributed Database Ecosystem Building the standards and ecosystem on top of heterogeneous databases, empowering enterprise data architecture transformation Official Website: OVERVIEW Apache ShardingSphere is positioned as Database Plus , a standard and ecosystem built on top of heterogeneous databases. As an operating system layer above databases, ShardingSphere does not create new databases but focuses on maximizing the computing capabilities of existing databases, providing unified data access and enhanced computing capabilities. Database Plus Core Concept : By building a…
read the full shardingsphere overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cube or shardingsphere more popular?
Cube has 21,147 GitHub stars and shardingsphere has 20,817. Cube has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cube and shardingsphere free?
Both are open source. Cube has no licence declared in this registry, and shardingsphere is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Cube and shardingsphere?
Cube is written in Rust and shardingsphere in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Cube or shardingsphere?
Choose Cube if you want the larger community (21,147 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose shardingsphere if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.