head to head · open source
compose vs Bacalhau
compose has 38,175 GitHub stars, 5,817 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bacalhau has 871 stars, 101 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. compose leads on adoption by 4,283% (38,175 vs 871 stars). compose is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Bacalhau is written in Go under Apache-2.0. compose has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Bacalhau 12%. compose 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
| compose | Bacalhau | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 871 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 101 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick compose if
- You weight community size — 38K 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 Bacalhau if
- You want the Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau fits your workflow better
About compose
Docker Compose is an Apache 2.0 licensed Go tool that defines and runs multi container applications on Docker from a single Compose file, aimed at developers and operators who need several containers to start together as one isolated application.
read the full compose overview →
About Bacalhau
Bacalhau is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed distributed compute orchestrator written in Go that brings computation to the data rather than moving data to computation, built for data engineers, data scientists, bioinformatics teams and infrastructure operators who run batch, edge and cross organizational workloads at petabyte scale.
read the full Bacalhau overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is compose or Bacalhau more popular?
compose has 38,175 GitHub stars and Bacalhau has 871. compose has the larger community by that measure.
Are compose and Bacalhau free?
Both are open source. compose is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Bacalhau under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between compose and Bacalhau?
compose is written in Go and Bacalhau 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, compose or Bacalhau?
Choose compose if you want the larger community (38,175 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Bacalhau if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.