head to head · open source
ansible vs ergo
ansible has 71,204 GitHub stars, 24,474 forks, 837 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ergo has 4,693 stars, 193 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. ansible leads on adoption by 1,417% (71,204 vs 4,693 stars). ansible is written in Python under GPL-3.0; ergo is written in Go under MIT. ansible has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, ergo 4%. ansible was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| ansible | ergo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 71K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 24K | ⑂ 193 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ansible if
- You weight community size — 71K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ergo if
- You want the ergo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ergo fits your workflow better
About ansible
[ ][copying] Ansible Ansible is a radically simple IT automation system. It handles configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad hoc task execution, network automation, and multi node orchestration. Ansible makes complex changes like zero downtime rolling updates with load balancers easy. More information on the Ansible website. Design Principles Have an extremely simple setup process with a minimal learning curve. Manage machines quickly and in parallel. Avoid custom agents and additional open ports, be agentless by leveraging the existing SSH daemon. Describe infrastructure in a…
read the full ansible overview →
About ergo
Actor model for Go. Build distributed systems without the distributed systems headache. Goroutines and channels work great until your system grows. Then come the mutexes, the race conditions, the service discovery configs, the retry logic, the connection pool management. Ergo replaces all of that with one model: isolated processes that communicate through messages, supervised automatically, addressable across any cluster. Inspired by Erlang/OTP. Zero external dependencies. Pure Go. The core idea in 30 seconds No locks. No race conditions. Sequential message handling is the guarantee. Why not just goroutines +…
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Frequently asked questions
Is ansible or ergo more popular?
ansible has 71,204 GitHub stars and ergo has 4,693. ansible has the larger community by that measure.
Are ansible and ergo free?
Both are open source. ansible is licensed under GPL-3.0 and ergo under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ansible and ergo?
ansible is written in Python and ergo in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ansible or ergo?
Choose ansible if you want the larger community (71,204 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ergo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.