Programming

Top 20 Python ORMs and database drivers

SQLAlchemy, psycopg, redis-py and other ways to talk to a database from Python

Updated 1 h ago · GitHub stars (stars)

Why these 20

Ranked by GitHub stars: how many developers bookmarked the project. Stars measure attention, not quality, so each row also shows forks, licence, the last push and the section of the community list it sits in. ORMs (SQLAlchemy, Peewee, SQLModel) and plain drivers (psycopg, asyncpg, PyMySQL) answer different needs and are in one list, so check the 'listed under' column. Drivers are often used through an ORM, so their stars undercount how much they run. Python's built-in sqlite3 has no repository of its own and can't be ranked.

1

sqlmodel

SQLModel is based on Python type annotations, and powered by Pydantic and SQLAlchemy.

18,445 stars 893 forkslast push 2026-10-15PythonMIT
2

redis

The Python client for Redis.

13,651 stars 2,795 forkslast push 2026-10-21PythonMIT
3

sqlalchemy

The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper.

12,252 stars 1,834 forkslast push 2026-10-21PythonMIT
4

peewee

A small, expressive ORM.

11,996 stars 1,382 forkslast push 2026-10-07PythonMIT
5

asyncpg

A fast PostgreSQL Database Client Library for Python/asyncio.

8,112 stars 480 forkslast push 2026-10-08PythonApache-2.0
6

pymysql

A pure-Python MySQL and MariaDB client library, based on PEP 249.

7,856 stars 1,441 forkslast push 2026-10-21PythonMIT
7

pymongo

The official Python client for MongoDB.

4,361 stars 1,160 forkslast push 2026-10-20PythonApache-2.0
8

mongoengine

A Python Object-Document-Mapper for working with MongoDB.

4,348 stars 1,226 forkslast push 2026-09-06PythonMIT
9

pyodbc

An ODBC bridge for connecting to SQL Server and any other ODBC-accessible database.

3,089 stars 569 forkslast push 2026-10-03C++MIT-0
10

beanie

An asynchronous Python object-document mapper (ODM) for MongoDB.

2,707 stars 309 forkslast push 2026-10-19PythonApache-2.0
11

pynamodb

A Pythonic interface for Amazon DynamoDB.

2,647 stars 433 forkslast push 2026-05-29PythonMIT
12

mysqlclient

MySQL and MariaDB connector (MySQLdb1 fork).

2,538 stars 445 forkslast push 2026-10-18PythonGPL-2.0
13

psycopg

A PostgreSQL adapter for Python, the successor to psycopg2.

2,511 stars 289 forkslast push 2026-10-12PythonLGPL-3.0
14

sqlite-utils

Python CLI utility and library for manipulating SQLite databases.

2,180 stars 200 forkslast push 2026-10-11PythonApache-2.0

Also in: #7 database command-line clients
15

pgvector

pgvector support for Python, adding vector types and similarity search to psycopg, asyncpg, SQLAlchemy, and Django.

1,537 stars 100 forkslast push 2026-10-17PythonMIT
16

cassandra-driver

The Python Driver for Apache Cassandra.

1,430 stars 592 forkslast push 2026-07-21PythonApache-2.0
17

clickhouse-driver

Python driver with native interface for ClickHouse.

1,307 stars 245 forkslast push 2026-07-22PythonNOASSERTION
18

apsw

Another Python SQLite Wrapper, exposing the complete SQLite C API.

947 stars 110 forkslast push 2026-10-19CNOASSERTION
19

clickhouse-connect

The official ClickHouse client, with SQLAlchemy and Superset connectors.

532 stars 170 forkslast push 2026-10-16PythonApache-2.0
20

mssql-python

Official Microsoft driver for SQL Server and Azure SQL, built on ODBC for high performance.

480 stars 62 forkslast push 2026-10-20PythonNOASSERTION

How it is measured

Every library in the ORM and Database Drivers sections of the community list vinta/awesome-python on GitHub that has a public repository, ranked by GitHub stars from the GitHub API; archived repositories are left out. Refreshed every 6 hours. The Django ORM is left out (its repository is all of Django, see the web frameworks list).

References

vinta/awesome-python: ORM and Database Drivers, GitHub community list (list text CC BY 4.0; star counts from the GitHub API). Checked 2026-10-21 08:59 UTC.
vinta/awesome-python (ORM, Database Drivers), GitHub community list, 22 tools with a public repository.

Why these 20

How it is measured

References

Also in