Canal vs Debezium
Canal
github.comDebezium
debezium.ioSide by side
| Figure | Canal | Debezium |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Change Data Capture Software | 8.7 (#3) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Deployment | The README says Canal provides native Docker image support. | The most common deployment uses Apache Kafka Connect; Debezium can also be embedded in JVM applications or run through Debezium Server. |
| Deployment limit | The Docker QuickStart says one Docker instance can run only one Canal instance with the default setup. | The installation page lists Kafka Connect connector deployment and says the Debezium Operator, Server, and CLI installation methods are coming soon. |
| License | The repository identifies its license as Apache-2.0. | All Debezium project code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. |
| Purpose | Canal parses MySQL database incremental logs and provides incremental data subscription and consumption. | Debezium is an open source distributed platform for change data capture that streams database row changes to applications. |
| Support | The project asks users to report bugs and feature requests through GitHub issues. | The project points users to its documentation, user chat room, and Google Group for questions. |
Plans
In their own words
Canal
Canal is a free, self-hosted project that parses MySQL binary logs so applications can subscribe to and consume database changes incrementally. It acts like a MySQL replica, requesting binlog data from a master and parsing the events. Listed uses include database mirroring and real-time backup, index maintenance, cache refresh, and business-logic processing. The README lists source versions MySQL 5.1.x, 5.5.x, 5.6.x, 5.7.x, and 8.0.x. Canal can send change records to Kafka and RocketMQ; the quick start also lists RabbitMQ and Pulsar server modes. Its Protocol Buffers 3.0 client-server design has clients for Java, C#, Go, and Python. Canal Admin provides a web interface for managing configuration, tasks, and logs, and the project lists native Prometheus monitoring. Docker images and a Docker QuickStart are available, but the default setup runs only one Canal instance per Docker instance. The project is licensed under Apache-2.0.
Debezium
Debezium captures row-level database changes and delivers them to applications as events, so they can respond to inserts, updates, and deletes. Its connectors use database logs for low-delay capture without requiring changes to the data model, and can take initial or incremental snapshots, filter schemas, tables, and columns, and mask selected values. Listed databases include MongoDB, MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Db2, and Cassandra. Connectors for Vitess, Spanner, Informix, CockroachDB, YashanDB, Ingres, and Milvus are marked incubating and may change without backward compatibility. A common deployment uses Apache Kafka Connect; Debezium can also run through Debezium Server or as a library in JVM applications. Debezium Server can send serialized events to Amazon Kinesis, Google Cloud Pub/Sub, and Apache Pulsar. Ready-to-use transformations support routing, filtering, and event flattening. Debezium is free under the Apache Software License 2.0. Its quay.io container images are for testing and evaluation, not production.