head to head · open source
ansible vs tork
ansible has 70,721 GitHub stars, 24,333 forks, 837 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tork has 817 stars, 63 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. ansible leads on adoption by 8,556% (70,721 vs 817 stars). ansible is written in Python under GPL-3.0; tork is written in Go under MIT. ansible has attracted 34% as many forks as stars, tork 8%. 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 | tork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 71K | ★ 817 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-07-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 24K | ⑂ 63 |
| 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 tork if
- You want the tork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tork fits your workflow better
About ansible
Ansible is a radically simple, agentless IT automation platform, written in Python and licensed under GPL 3.0, that handles configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad hoc task execution, network automation, and multi node orchestration for operators, developers, and network and cloud teams who manage machines over plain SSH.
read the full ansible overview →
About tork
Tork is a lightweight, distributed workflow engine written in Go and released under the MIT license. It runs each task of a job as a script inside its own container, so work is defined in YAML rather than as compiled code. The project lives in the Go ecosystem and uses Docker, Podman, or a plain shell as its task runtime, with PostgreSQL as the datastore and a message broker such as RabbitMQ for distributed operation.
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Frequently asked questions
Is ansible or tork more popular?
ansible has 70,721 GitHub stars and tork has 817. ansible has the larger community by that measure.
Are ansible and tork free?
Both are open source. ansible is licensed under GPL-3.0 and tork under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ansible and tork?
ansible is written in Python and tork 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 tork?
Choose ansible if you want the larger community (70,721 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose tork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.