head to head · open source
Strapi vs daptin
Strapi has 73,184 GitHub stars, 9,875 forks, 558 open issues and last shipped yesterday. daptin has 1,896 stars, 122 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Strapi leads on adoption by 3,760% (73,184 vs 1,896 stars). Strapi is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; daptin is written in Go under LGPL-3.0. Strapi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, daptin 6%. Strapi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (graphql, headless-cms), 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
| Strapi | daptin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 73K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | Custom / other | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 122 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Strapi if
- You weight community size — 73K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick daptin if
- You want the daptin feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and daptin fits your workflow better
About Strapi
Strapi is an open source headless content management system built entirely in JavaScript and TypeScript. It provides a customizable admin dashboard and automatically generates REST and GraphQL APIs for any content structure defined through its visual Content Type Builder. Strapi lives in the JavaScript ecosystem and targets developers who need to deliver content to diverse frontends—including web, mobile, and IoT applications—without being locked into a specific presentation layer.
read the full Strapi overview →
About daptin
Daptin is a self hosted application server built in Go. It lives in the backend as a service and headless CMS ecosystem, and it organizes behavior around schema files that describe records, fields, relationships, validation, and optional flags. Each configured table becomes a permission aware JSON:API resource at /api/{entity}, and the server attaches identity, files, automation, integrations, realtime delivery, metering, and protocol surfaces around that runtime.
read the full daptin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Strapi or daptin more popular?
Strapi has 73,184 GitHub stars and daptin has 1,896. Strapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Strapi and daptin free?
Both are open source. Strapi has no licence declared in this registry, and daptin is licensed under LGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Strapi and daptin?
Strapi is written in TypeScript and daptin 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, Strapi or daptin?
Choose Strapi if you want the larger community (73,184 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose daptin if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.