head to head · open source
utopia vs liam
utopia has 9,245 GitHub stars, 1,035 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped today. liam has 5,116 stars, 239 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped yesterday. utopia leads on adoption by 81% (9,245 vs 5,116 stars). utopia is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; liam is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. utopia has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, liam 5%. utopia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (postgresql), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| utopia | liam | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.2K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 239 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick utopia if
- You weight community size — 9.2K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick liam if
- You want the liam feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and liam fits your workflow better
About utopia
Utopia is the world's first open source enterprise world model: a self hosted knowledge substrate with a bitemporal graph and an ontology at its base layer, built by DeepLethe for teams that need agent memory, governed knowledge, and a trustworthy decision core running on hardware they control.
read the full utopia overview →
About liam
Liam is an open source TypeScript tool that automatically generates beautiful, interactive ER diagrams from an existing database schema, built for developers and teams who need to read, document, and share the structure of a database without drawing diagrams by hand.
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Documentation & Knowledge Base projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Documentation & Knowledge Base field.
Frequently asked questions
Is utopia or liam more popular?
utopia has 9,245 GitHub stars and liam has 5,116. utopia has the larger community by that measure.
Are utopia and liam free?
Both are open source. utopia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and liam under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between utopia and liam?
utopia is written in Rust and liam 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, utopia or liam?
Choose utopia if you want the larger community (9,245 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose liam if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.