head to head · open source
compose vs ergo
compose has 38,175 GitHub stars, 5,817 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ergo has 4,660 stars, 191 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. compose leads on adoption by 719% (38,175 vs 4,660 stars). compose is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ergo is written in Go under MIT. compose has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, ergo 4%. compose was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (go, golang), 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
| compose | ergo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 191 |
| 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 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 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 ergo
Ergo is an actor based framework for Go that brings network transparency to event driven architecture, drawing direct inspiration from Erlang/OTP. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is distributed as a pure Go library with zero external dependencies. The framework models every unit of work as an isolated process that communicates only through messages, so shared state, mutexes, and race conditions are eliminated by design rather than managed by convention.
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Frequently asked questions
Is compose or ergo more popular?
compose has 38,175 GitHub stars and ergo has 4,660. compose has the larger community by that measure.
Are compose and ergo free?
Both are open source. compose is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ergo under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between compose and ergo?
compose is written in Go 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, compose or ergo?
Choose compose if you want the larger community (38,175 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ergo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.