head to head · open source
shardingsphere vs realtime
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars, 6,900 forks, 197 open issues and last shipped yesterday. realtime has 7,634 stars, 467 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shardingsphere leads on adoption by 172% (20,800 vs 7,634 stars). shardingsphere is written in Java under Apache-2.0; realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0. shardingsphere has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, realtime 6%. realtime 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
| shardingsphere | realtime | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 467 |
| 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 realtime if
- You want the realtime feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You evaluated both and realtime 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 realtime
Supabase Realtime is a server built with Elixir on the Phoenix Framework that pushes three kinds of realtime functionality to browser and server clients over WebSockets. It lives in the Supabase ecosystem, where it acts as the realtime layer alongside Postgres, and it is distributed as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. The project has been public for roughly seven years, carries 7,632 stars and 463 forks, and its topic list places it in the company of change data capture, CRDT, distributed systems, pubsub, and PostgreSQL tooling.
read the full realtime overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shardingsphere or realtime more popular?
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars and realtime has 7,634. shardingsphere has the larger community by that measure.
Are shardingsphere and realtime free?
Both are open source. shardingsphere is licensed under Apache-2.0 and realtime under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shardingsphere and realtime?
shardingsphere is written in Java and realtime in Elixir. 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 realtime?
Choose shardingsphere if you want the larger community (20,800 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose realtime if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.