head to head · open source
Checkmate vs calico
Checkmate has 11,021 GitHub stars, 1,236 forks, 114 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. calico has 7,410 stars, 1,620 forks, 279 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Checkmate leads on adoption by 49% (11,021 vs 7,410 stars). Checkmate is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; calico is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Checkmate has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, calico 22%. calico 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
| Checkmate | calico | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 7.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Checkmate if
- You weight community size — 11K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick calico if
- You want the calico 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 calico fits your workflow better
About Checkmate
🇺🇸 English 🇸🇦 العربية 🇪🇸 Català 🇨🇿 Čeština 🇩🇪 Deutsch 🇪🇸 Español 🇫🇮 Suomi 🇫🇷 Français 🇮🇹 Italiano 🇯🇵 日本語 🇧🇷 Português (Brasil) 🇷🇺 Русский 🇹🇭 ไทย 🇹🇷 Türkçe 🇺🇦 Українська 🇻🇳 Tiếng Việt 🇨🇳 简体中文 🇹🇼 繁體中文 Checkmate An open source uptime and infrastructure monitoring application This repository contains both the frontend and the backend of Checkmate, an open source, self hosted monitoring tool for tracking server hardware, uptime, response times, and incidents in real time with beautiful visualizations. Checkmate regularly checks whether a server/website is accessible and performs…
read the full Checkmate overview →
About calico
Calico Quickstart Docs Contribute Slack Releases 🐾 Welcome to Project Calico! Project Calico, created and maintained by [Tigera][tigera], is an open source project with an active development and user community. Calico Open Source has grown to be the most widely adopted solution for container networking and security, powering 8M+ nodes daily across 166 countries. 🌟 Why use Calico? Data Plane Choice : eBPF, standard Linux, Windows, and VPP — versatility in network solutions. Interoperability : Works across multiple distros, multiple clouds, bare metal, and VMs. Optimized Performance : Engineered for high speed…
read the full calico overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Checkmate or calico more popular?
Checkmate has 11,021 GitHub stars and calico has 7,410. Checkmate has the larger community by that measure.
Are Checkmate and calico free?
Both are open source. Checkmate is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and calico under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Checkmate and calico?
Checkmate is written in TypeScript and calico 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, Checkmate or calico?
Choose Checkmate if you want the larger community (11,021 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose calico if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.