head to head · open source
shardingsphere vs duckle
shardingsphere has 20,817 GitHub stars, 6,906 forks, 197 open issues and last shipped yesterday. duckle has 1,546 stars, 120 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. shardingsphere leads on adoption by 1,247% (20,817 vs 1,546 stars). shardingsphere is written in Java under Apache-2.0; duckle is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. shardingsphere has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, duckle 8%. 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 | duckle | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 120 |
| 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 duckle if
- You want the duckle feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and duckle fits your workflow better
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 →
About duckle
Pipelines you own. Author and deploy to your servers or cloud. Duckle is an open source ETL platform for teams who want their pipelines running on their own infrastructure. Author on a canvas, in Python or in SQL, then ship the same file to your own server or cloud account: duckle runner serve runs it headless on a schedule, in Docker or on a box you own, with a web console, roles and an audit trail. Every pipeline is one file in git, so it outlives whoever wrote it. It compiles to SQL on DuckDB and uses every core you give the box, so a bigger instance is a faster pipeline: 96 million rows out of Postgres to…
read the full duckle overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shardingsphere or duckle more popular?
shardingsphere has 20,817 GitHub stars and duckle has 1,546. shardingsphere has the larger community by that measure.
Are shardingsphere and duckle free?
Both are open source. shardingsphere is licensed under Apache-2.0 and duckle under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shardingsphere and duckle?
shardingsphere is written in Java and duckle in Rust. 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 duckle?
Choose shardingsphere if you want the larger community (20,817 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose duckle if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.