head to head · open source
drawDB vs valkey
drawDB has 39,590 GitHub stars, 3,253 forks, 241 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. valkey has 27,258 stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. drawDB leads on adoption by 45% (39,590 vs 27,258 stars). drawDB is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause. drawDB has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, valkey 5%. valkey 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
| drawDB | valkey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 27K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 valkey if
- You want the valkey feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and valkey fits your workflow better
About drawDB
drawDB is a free, open source, browser based database entity relationship diagram (ERD) editor and SQL generator for developers, data modellers, and teams who need to design database schemas and turn them into SQL scripts without creating an account.
read the full drawDB overview →
About valkey
Valkey is high performance data structure server. Serves key/value workloads first. Supports wide range of native structures plus extensible plugin system for new data structures and access patterns. Written in C, licensed BSD 3 Clause. Lives in key value store and NoSQL ecosystem, shares protocol lineage with Redis, and carries cache , database , key value store , redis , valkey client topics.
read the full valkey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is drawDB or valkey more popular?
drawDB has 39,590 GitHub stars and valkey has 27,258. drawDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are drawDB and valkey free?
Both are open source. drawDB is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and valkey under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between drawDB and valkey?
drawDB is written in JavaScript and valkey 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, drawDB or valkey?
Choose drawDB if you want the larger community (39,590 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose valkey if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.