head to head · open source
shardingsphere vs flink-cdc
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars, 6,900 forks, 197 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flink-cdc has 6,475 stars, 2,196 forks, 119 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shardingsphere leads on adoption by 221% (20,800 vs 6,475 stars). shardingsphere is written in Java under Apache-2.0; flink-cdc is written in Java under Apache-2.0. shardingsphere has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, flink-cdc 34%. shardingsphere was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (data-pipeline, mysql), 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 | flink-cdc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 flink-cdc if
- You want the flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc
Flink CDC is an Apache 2.0 streaming data integration tool built on Apache Flink that moves real time and batch data between databases and downstream systems, and it is aimed at data engineers and platform teams who need change data capture pipelines without writing per source job code.
read the full flink-cdc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shardingsphere or flink-cdc more popular?
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars and flink-cdc has 6,475. shardingsphere has the larger community by that measure.
Are shardingsphere and flink-cdc free?
Both are open source. shardingsphere is licensed under Apache-2.0 and flink-cdc under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shardingsphere and flink-cdc?
shardingsphere is written in Java and flink-cdc 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, shardingsphere or flink-cdc?
Choose shardingsphere if you want the larger community (20,800 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose flink-cdc if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.