head to head · open source
steampipe vs whodb
steampipe has 7,957 GitHub stars, 341 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. whodb has 5,033 stars, 240 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped today. steampipe leads on adoption by 58% (7,957 vs 5,033 stars). steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; whodb is written in Go under Apache-2.0. steampipe has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, whodb 5%. whodb 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
| steampipe | whodb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.0K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 341 | ⑂ 240 |
| 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 whodb if
- You want the whodb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and whodb fits your workflow better
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 →
About whodb
WhoDB is an Apache 2.0, Go based open source data workspace that gives users one place to explore databases, edit data, run queries, and understand how a schema fits together. It runs in the browser, is available as a desktop application, and also provides a terminal CLI, so it fits the open source data engineering and integration ecosystem for internal tools, data platforms, database management, data governance, data integration, data pipelines, data catalogs, data lineage, and ER diagrams.
read the full whodb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is steampipe or whodb more popular?
steampipe has 7,957 GitHub stars and whodb has 5,033. steampipe has the larger community by that measure.
Are steampipe and whodb free?
Both are open source. steampipe is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and whodb under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between steampipe and whodb?
steampipe is written in Go and whodb 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, steampipe or whodb?
Choose steampipe if you want the larger community (7,957 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose whodb if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.