head to head · open source
TiDB vs Activeloop
TiDB has 40,706 GitHub stars, 6,285 forks, 6,976 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Activeloop has 9,265 stars, 725 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. TiDB leads on adoption by 339% (40,706 vs 9,265 stars). TiDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Activeloop is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. TiDB has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Activeloop 8%. TiDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (agent, ai), 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
| TiDB | Activeloop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-05-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 725 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick TiDB if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Activeloop if
- You want the Activeloop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Activeloop fits your workflow better
About TiDB
TiDB TiDB (/’taɪdiːbi:/, "Ti" stands for Titanium) is an open source, cloud native, distributed SQL database designed for high availability, horizontal and vertical scalability, strong consistency, and high performance. Key Features Quick Start Need Help? Architecture Contributing License See Also Acknowledgments Key Features Distributed Transactions : TiDB uses a two phase commit protocol to ensure ACID compliance, providing strong consistency. Transactions span multiple nodes, and TiDB's distributed nature ensures data correctness even in the presence of network partitions or node failures. Horizontal and…
About Activeloop
Deep Lake: Database for AI Docs • Get Started • API Reference • LangChain & VectorDBs Course • Blog • Whitepaper • Slack • Twitter What is Deep Lake? Deep Lake is a Database for AI powered by a storage format optimized for deep learning applications. Deep Lake can be used for: 1. Storing and searching data plus vectors while building LLM applications 2. Managing datasets while training deep learning models Deep Lake simplifies the deployment of enterprise grade LLM based products by offering storage for all data types (embeddings, audio, text, videos, images, dicom, pdfs…
read the full Activeloop overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is TiDB or Activeloop more popular?
TiDB has 40,706 GitHub stars and Activeloop has 9,265. TiDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are TiDB and Activeloop free?
Both are open source. TiDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Activeloop under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between TiDB and Activeloop?
TiDB is written in Go and Activeloop in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, TiDB or Activeloop?
Choose TiDB if you want the larger community (40,706 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Activeloop if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.