head to head · open source
shardingsphere vs steampipe
shardingsphere has 20,801 GitHub stars, 6,900 forks, 197 open issues and last shipped today. steampipe has 7,957 stars, 341 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. shardingsphere leads on adoption by 161% (20,801 vs 7,957 stars). shardingsphere is written in Java under Apache-2.0; steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. shardingsphere has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, steampipe 4%. shardingsphere 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 | steampipe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 8.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 341 |
| 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 steampipe if
- You want the steampipe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and steampipe 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 steampipe
Steampipe is an AGPL 3.0, Go based zero ETL tool that maps APIs and services to SQL tables, letting anyone who already writes SQL — cloud engineers, DevSecOps and security teams, data engineers — query live data from AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub and Kubernetes without building a pipeline or running a database.
read the full steampipe overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shardingsphere or steampipe more popular?
shardingsphere has 20,801 GitHub stars and steampipe has 7,957. shardingsphere has the larger community by that measure.
Are shardingsphere and steampipe free?
Both are open source. shardingsphere is licensed under Apache-2.0 and steampipe under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shardingsphere and steampipe?
shardingsphere is written in Java and steampipe 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 steampipe?
Choose shardingsphere if you want the larger community (20,801 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose steampipe if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.