What is Litestream used for?

Litestream is a standalone disaster recovery tool that continuously replicates SQLite database changes to another file or S3 storage. It is a good fit for backing up SQLite-based apps and disaster recovery for small production databases.

Is Litestream open source?

Yes. Litestream is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at benbjohnson/litestream and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Litestream is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What are some alternatives to Litestream?

Similar open-source tools in the Databases category include rqlite, libSQL and CloudNativePG. SaaS products in the same category include Cloudflare D1, KX kdb+ and Aerospike.

Is Litestream actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Litestream was on 25 September 2026, and the latest release is v0.5.17, published on 31 August 2026. The project has 14k stars on GitHub.

Litestream: open-source databases

About Litestream

Litestream is a standalone disaster recovery tool for SQLite. It runs as a background process and replicates changes incrementally to another file or to S3, so a copy of the database is available if the original is lost. It communicates with SQLite only through the SQLite API, so it does not corrupt the database. The project is written in Go.

When replication starts, Litestream creates an internal lock table in the source database that it uses to coordinate synchronization around WAL checkpoints. The README says the table is expected and safe to leave in place, that it is part of the source schema and therefore appears in restored databases, and that a database under Litestream will not remain byte-identical to its earlier state. The table should not be dropped while Litestream is running.

Litestream is released under the Apache 2.0 license. Installation instructions and documentation are on litestream.io, bug reports and ideas go to GitHub Issues, and security vulnerabilities should be reported privately rather than in a public issue.

Key features

Continuous replication of SQLite changes
Replicates to another file or S3
Runs as a background process
Uses only the SQLite API
Restore from replicated copies

Good fit for

→Backing up SQLite-based apps
→Disaster recovery for small production databases

Built with: Go; SQLite
Tags: sqlite; replication; backup; disaster-recovery; s3; golang; database; streaming

Litestream: questions and answers

What is Litestream used for?: Litestream is a standalone disaster recovery tool that continuously replicates SQLite database changes to another file or S3 storage. It is a good fit for backing up SQLite-based apps and disaster recovery for small production databases.
Is Litestream open source?: Yes. Litestream is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at benbjohnson/litestream and is written mainly in Go.
Is Litestream free?: Yes. Litestream is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What are some alternatives to Litestream?: Similar open-source tools in the Databases category include rqlite, libSQL and CloudNativePG. SaaS products in the same category include Cloudflare D1, KX kdb+ and Aerospike.
Is Litestream actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Litestream was on 25 September 2026, and the latest release is v0.5.17, published on 31 August 2026. The project has 14k stars on GitHub.