pandas vs Polars vs DuckDB
A side-by-side look at how actively pandas, Polars and DuckDB are developed on GitHub — popularity, contributor base, commit activity and how quickly issues and pull requests move.
What the numbers say
- pandas is the most-starred of the 3, with 50k stars, close to Polars's 40k.
- Over the 52 weeks to the snapshot, DuckDB recorded the most commits (23k), against 2.4k for Polars.
- pandas has closed or merged the most pull requests in its lifetime: 39k.
- Relative to its popularity, DuckDB carries the lightest open-issue load: 14.2 open issues per 1,000 stars, versus 64.2 for Polars.
Head-to-head
Snapshot taken 30 September 2026.
| Metric | pandas Active | Polars Active | DuckDB Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 50k | 40k | 42k |
| Forks | 20k | 3.1k | 3.8k |
| Contributors | 4.3k | 776 | 903 |
| Commits, last 52 weeks | 2.7k | 2.4k | 23k |
| Open issues | 2.2k | 2.6k | 592 |
| Open pull requests | 251 | 371 | 351 |
| Closed / merged PRs | 39k | 16k | 14k |
| Watchers | 1.1k | 221 | 279 |
| Last push | 30 Sep 2026 | 30 Sep 2026 | 30 Sep 2026 |
| Latest release | v3.0.6 (Sep 2026) | py-1.44.2 (Sep 2026) | v1.5.6 (Sep 2026) |
| Main language | Python | Rust | C++ |
| Licence | BSD-3-Clause | MIT | MIT |
| Created | Aug 2010 | May 2020 | Jun 2018 |
Bold marks the highest value in a row. “Active / Slowing / Dormant” is a simple heuristic from how recently code was pushed and open issues per star — a starting point, not a verdict. Stars measure popularity, not quality.
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