head to head · open source
steampipe vs flink-cdc
steampipe has 7,994 GitHub stars, 347 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flink-cdc has 6,491 stars, 2,205 forks, 119 open issues and last shipped yesterday. steampipe leads on adoption by 23% (7,994 vs 6,491 stars). steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; flink-cdc is written in Java under Apache-2.0. steampipe has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, flink-cdc 34%. flink-cdc was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (etl), 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
| steampipe | flink-cdc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.0K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 347 | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick steampipe if
- You weight community size — 8.0K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 steampipe
select from cloud; Steampipe is the zero ETL way to query APIs and services. Use it to expose data sources to SQL. SQL . It's been the data access standard for decades. Live data . Query APIs in real time. Speed . Query APIs faster than you ever thought possible. Concurrency . Query many data sources in parallel. Single binary . Use it locally, deploy it in CI/CD pipelines. Demo time! Documentation See the documentation for: Running queries Managing Steampipe CLI commands Integrations Developing plugins Install Steampipe Install Steampipe from the downloads page: Install a plugin for your favorite service (e.g…
read the full steampipe overview →
About flink-cdc
Flink CDC is a distributed data integration tool for real time data and batch data, built on top of Apache Flink. It prioritizes efficient end to end data integration and offers enhanced functionalities such as full database synchronization, sharding table synchronization, schema evolution and data transformation. API Layers Flink CDC provides three API layers for different usage scenarios: 1. YAML API (Pipeline API) The YAML API provides a declarative, zero code approach to define data pipelines. Users describe the source, sink, routing, transformation, and schema evolution rules in a YAML file and submit it…
read the full flink-cdc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is steampipe or flink-cdc more popular?
steampipe has 7,994 GitHub stars and flink-cdc has 6,491. steampipe has the larger community by that measure.
Are steampipe and flink-cdc free?
Both are open source. steampipe is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and flink-cdc under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between steampipe and flink-cdc?
steampipe is written in Go 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, steampipe or flink-cdc?
Choose steampipe if you want the larger community (7,994 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose flink-cdc if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.