head to head · open source
TiDB vs drawDB
TiDB has 40,701 GitHub stars, 6,284 forks, 6,976 open issues and last shipped yesterday. drawDB has 40,223 stars, 3,350 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. TiDB leads on adoption by 1% (40,701 vs 40,223 stars). TiDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0; drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. TiDB has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, drawDB 8%. TiDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (database), 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 | drawDB | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 40K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| 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 drawDB if
- You want the drawDB feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and drawDB 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 drawDB
drawDB Free, simple, and intuitive database schema editor and SQL generator. DrawDB is a robust and user friendly database entity relationship diagram (ERD) editor right in your browser. Build diagrams with a few clicks, export and import SQL scripts, generate migrations, customize your editor, and more without creating an account. See the full set of features on here. Getting Started Local Development Build Docker Build If you want to enable sharing, set up the server and environment variables according to .env.sample . This is optional unless you need to share files. Contributing Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for…
read the full drawDB overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is TiDB or drawDB more popular?
TiDB has 40,701 GitHub stars and drawDB has 40,223. TiDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are TiDB and drawDB free?
Both are open source. TiDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and drawDB under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between TiDB and drawDB?
TiDB is written in Go and drawDB in JavaScript. 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 drawDB?
Choose TiDB if you want the larger community (40,701 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose drawDB if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.