head to head · open source
Vector vs airframe
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars, 2,286 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. airframe has 666 stars, 67 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. Vector leads on adoption by 3,292% (22,589 vs 666 stars). Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; airframe is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. Vector has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, airframe 10%. Vector was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (metrics), 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
| Vector | airframe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 666 |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 67 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Vector if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick airframe if
- You want the airframe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and airframe fits your workflow better
About Vector
Vector is an open source observability data pipeline written in Rust and licensed under MPL 2.0. It operates as an end to end system for collecting, transforming, and routing logs and metrics within the cloud native monitoring ecosystem. The project is maintained by Datadog's Community Open Source Engineering team, and its topics include agent, cloud native, data transformation, datadog, etl, events, forwarder, logs, metrics, and monitoring.
read the full Vector overview →
About airframe
Airframe is a collection of essential building blocks for Scala applications — logging, JSON and MessagePack serialization, dependency injection, an HTTP server and client with RPC support, and the AirSpec testing framework — aimed at Scala developers building services and libraries.
read the full airframe overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Vector or airframe more popular?
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars and airframe has 666. Vector has the larger community by that measure.
Are Vector and airframe free?
Both are open source. Vector is licensed under MPL-2.0 and airframe under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Vector and airframe?
Vector is written in Rust and airframe in Scala. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Vector or airframe?
Choose Vector if you want the larger community (22,589 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose airframe if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.