head to head · open source
argo-cd vs dagger
argo-cd has 24,517 GitHub stars, 8,116 forks, 4,362 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dagger has 16,573 stars, 946 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped yesterday. argo-cd leads on adoption by 48% (24,517 vs 16,573 stars). argo-cd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; dagger is written in Go under Apache-2.0. argo-cd has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, dagger 6%. dagger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ci-cd, continuous-deployment, devops, docker), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| argo-cd | dagger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.1K | ⑂ 946 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick argo-cd if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dagger if
- You want the dagger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dagger fits your workflow better
About argo-cd
Releases: Code: Social: Argo CD Declarative Continuous Delivery for Kubernetes What is Argo CD? Argo CD is a declarative GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. Why Argo CD? 1. Application definitions, configurations, and environments should be declarative and version controlled. 1. Application deployment and lifecycle management should be automated, auditable, and easy to understand. Who uses Argo CD? Official Argo CD user list Documentation To learn more about Argo CD go to the complete documentation. Check live demo at Community Contribution, Discussion and Support You can reach the Argo CD community…
read the full argo-cd overview →
About dagger
Dagger: a better way to ship Dagger is a platform for automating software delivery. It can build, test and ship any codebase, reliably and at scale. Dagger runs locally, in your CI server, or directly in the cloud. Why Dagger? Dagger makes your software delivery programmable , local first , repeatable and observable . Programmable . Shell scripts and proprietary YAML are no longer acceptable for automating software delivery. Dagger provides: a complete execution engine and system API; SDKs for 8 languages; an interactive REPL; a rich ecosystem of reusable modules; and more. Local first . Once you automate a task…
read the full dagger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is argo-cd or dagger more popular?
argo-cd has 24,517 GitHub stars and dagger has 16,573. argo-cd has the larger community by that measure.
Are argo-cd and dagger free?
Both are open source. argo-cd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dagger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between argo-cd and dagger?
argo-cd is written in Go and dagger 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, argo-cd or dagger?
Choose argo-cd if you want the larger community (24,517 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dagger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.