head to head · open source
TiDB vs Turso
TiDB has 40,701 GitHub stars, 6,284 forks, 6,976 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Turso has 17,309 stars, 554 forks, 453 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. TiDB leads on adoption by 135% (40,701 vs 17,309 stars). TiDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Turso is written in C under MIT. TiDB has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Turso 3%. 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 | Turso | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 554 |
| 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 Turso if
- You want the Turso feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and Turso 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 Turso
libSQL libSQL is an open source, open contribution fork of SQLite, created and maintained by Turso . libSQL Docs · libSQL Manifesto · Turso · Turso Docs · Discord · Blog & Tutorials [!IMPORTANT] Turso database and libSQL are two different projects from the same team. libSQL (this repository) is an open source fork of SQLite. It extends SQLite with features like embedded replicas and remote access, but inherits SQLite's fundamental limitations such as the single writer model. Turso database is a SQLite compatible database rewritten from scratch in Rust. It is not a fork of SQLite — it is a completely new…
read the full Turso overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is TiDB or Turso more popular?
TiDB has 40,701 GitHub stars and Turso has 17,309. TiDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are TiDB and Turso free?
Both are open source. TiDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Turso under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between TiDB and Turso?
TiDB is written in Go and Turso 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 Turso?
Choose TiDB if you want the larger community (40,701 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Turso if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.