head to head · open source
shardingsphere vs sling-cli
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars, 6,901 forks, 197 open issues and last shipped today. sling-cli has 904 stars, 81 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped today. shardingsphere leads on adoption by 2,201% (20,800 vs 904 stars). shardingsphere is written in Java under Apache-2.0; sling-cli is written in Go under GPL-3.0. shardingsphere has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, sling-cli 9%. sling-cli 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 | sling-cli | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 904 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 81 |
| 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 sling-cli if
- You want the sling-cli feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sling-cli 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 sling-cli
Slings from a data source to a data target. See docs.slingdata.io for more details. Sling is a passion project turned into a free CLI Product which offers an easy solution to create and maintain small to medium volume data pipelines using the Extract & Load (EL) approach. It focuses on data movement between: Database to Database File System to Database Database to File System API to Database API to File System Some key features: Single Binary deployment (built with Go). See installation page. Use Custom SQL as a stream: src stream='select from my table where col1 10' Manage / View / Test / Discover your connectio…
read the full sling-cli overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shardingsphere or sling-cli more popular?
shardingsphere has 20,800 GitHub stars and sling-cli has 904. shardingsphere has the larger community by that measure.
Are shardingsphere and sling-cli free?
Both are open source. shardingsphere is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sling-cli under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shardingsphere and sling-cli?
shardingsphere is written in Java and sling-cli in Go. 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 sling-cli?
Choose shardingsphere if you want the larger community (20,800 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sling-cli if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.