head to head · open source
shardingsphere vs duckle
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars, 6,900 forks, 197 open issues and last shipped yesterday. duckle has 1,307 stars, 101 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shardingsphere leads on adoption by 1,491% (20,800 vs 1,307 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 | ★ 1.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 101 |
| 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 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 duckle
Duckle is an open source ETL/ELT platform for data engineering and data integration teams. It lives in the DuckDB ecosystem and lets teams author pipelines on a visual canvas, in Python, or in SQL, then run them on their own servers or cloud accounts. The project is written in Rust and licensed under Apache 2.0.
read the full duckle overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shardingsphere or duckle more popular?
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars and duckle has 1,307. 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 (20,800 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.