head to head · open source
drawDB vs typeorm
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars, 3,350 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. typeorm has 36,665 stars, 6,694 forks, 646 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. drawDB leads on adoption by 10% (40,223 vs 36,665 stars). drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; typeorm is written in TypeScript under MIT. drawDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, typeorm 18%. drawDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (database, mariadb), 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
| drawDB | typeorm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 37K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 6.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick drawDB if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick typeorm if
- You want the typeorm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and typeorm fits your workflow better
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 →
About typeorm
TypeORM is an ORM that can run in Node.js, Browser, Cordova, Ionic, React Native, NativeScript, Expo, and Electron platforms and can be used with TypeScript and JavaScript (ES2023). Its goal is to always support the latest JavaScript features and provide additional features that help you to develop any kind of application that uses databases from small applications with a few tables to large scale enterprise applications with multiple databases. TypeORM supports more databases than any other JS/TS ORM: Google Spanner, Microsoft SqlServer, MySQL/MariaDB, MongoDB, Oracle, Postgres, SAP HANA and SQLite, as well as…
read the full typeorm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is drawDB or typeorm more popular?
drawDB has 40,223 GitHub stars and typeorm has 36,665. drawDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are drawDB and typeorm free?
Both are open source. drawDB is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and typeorm under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between drawDB and typeorm?
drawDB is written in JavaScript and typeorm in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, drawDB or typeorm?
Choose drawDB if you want the larger community (40,223 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose typeorm if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.