head to head · open source
steampipe vs helix-foundry
steampipe has 7,993 GitHub stars, 345 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. helix-foundry has 1,683 stars, 257 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. steampipe leads on adoption by 375% (7,993 vs 1,683 stars). steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; helix-foundry is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. steampipe has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, helix-foundry 15%. helix-foundry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (golang), 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 | helix-foundry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.0K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 345 | ⑂ 257 |
| 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 helix-foundry if
- You want the helix-foundry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and helix-foundry 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 helix-foundry
Helix Foundry Connect your company's data, let an agent draft an ontology over it, and load it into HelixDB as one connected graph you can explore and ask questions of. Connect PostgreSQL, MySQL, Amazon S3, Stripe, PostHog, WorkOS, GitHub, Linear, Granola and Cal.com, and upload documents (Markdown, text, PDF) and table files (CSV, TSV, JSON, JSON Lines, Parquet). An agent drafts the ontology: types, links, the tables and documents each comes from, and rules. You review it, edit it and make a version current. A load writes the version into HelixDB. Explore it as a graph or as records, follow every value back to…
read the full helix-foundry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is steampipe or helix-foundry more popular?
steampipe has 7,993 GitHub stars and helix-foundry has 1,683. steampipe has the larger community by that measure.
Are steampipe and helix-foundry free?
Both are open source. steampipe is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and helix-foundry under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between steampipe and helix-foundry?
steampipe is written in Go and helix-foundry in TypeScript. 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 helix-foundry?
Choose steampipe if you want the larger community (7,993 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose helix-foundry if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.