37,943 stars · Monospace Sustainable Core License 1.0 (SPDX MSCL-1.0-GPL), derived from the Fair Core License - NOT open source. Read from /blob/main/license on 2026-09-28; the path is LOWER CASE and all five conventional upper-case paths returned 404 · v12.4.1 (2026-09-23), read from /releases/latest; ungh was behind with v12.3.0 of 2026-08-18 · Track this in Scout
Wraps an existing SQL database with generated REST and GraphQL interfaces and an editing application, with permissions down to the individual field.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
A backend layer over a database that already exists. It generates REST and GraphQL interfaces from the existing tables and provides an editing application, with field-level permissions, extensions and support for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server and SQLite. It has existed since 2012 and is at major version 12.
What it is good for. Anyone with a database and no admin screen. Building that screen by hand is weeks of work that produces nothing a customer ever sees. It also suits a team where a non-programmer needs to edit content that a website reads, without being given database access.
- It wraps the database you have rather than owning its own schema, which means it can be added to an existing system instead of replacing it.
- Field-level permissions, so an editor can be given one column and not the table.
- Very actively developed. Version 12.4.1 on 23 September 2026, with code the day before.
- It is not open source, the licence file is not where you would look for it, and the rule that makes it free is not in the licence at all. The licence lives at the lower-case path
/blob/main/license; every conventional upper-case path returns "not found". It is the Monospace Sustainable Core License 1.0, derived from the Fair Core License. Its Competing Use clause forbids making the software available to anyone who competes with the licensor's paid offering of it, and its Limitations clause says you "must not move, change, disable or circumvent the license key functionality". But the widely repeated thresholds — free under five million dollars of annual revenue and fifty employees — appear only in the README and on the project's website, as an "Open Innovation Grant", not in the licence text. A promise in a README is a weaker instrument than a clause in a licence. - The one genuine comfort is also in the licence: each release converts to GPL-3.0 four years after it first became available, irrevocably. Old versions do eventually become free software. Current ones are not.
- No install commands and no requirements at all appear in the README. It offers a one-click deploy to a paid third-party host and otherwise points at its documentation site. No memory, disk, database version or Node version figures are published in the repository, so anyone sizing a machine is guessing. The 12.x line also ships breaking changes between minor versions.
- strapi/strapi
72,825 stars, code on 7 August 2026; the same headless content platform idea, but it creates and owns its own database structure rather than wrapping an existing one.
Track this in Scout - nocodb/nocodb
65,101 stars, code on 28 September 2026; also turns an existing SQL database into something usable, but presents it as a spreadsheet grid and aims at internal tools rather than powering websites.
Track this in Scout - hasura/graphql-engine
32,110 stars, code on 19 August 2026; points at an existing database and generates an interface with fine-grained permissions, but it is interface-only with no editing screen for non-technical people.
Track this in Scout
The repository documents only a one-click deploy to a hosted platform.
