head to head · open source
compose vs ergo
compose has 38,573 GitHub stars, 5,899 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ergo has 4,693 stars, 193 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. compose leads on adoption by 722% (38,573 vs 4,693 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 | ★ 39K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.9K | ⑂ 193 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick compose if
- You weight community size — 39K 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
Table of Contents Docker Compose Where to get Docker Compose + Windows and macOS + Linux Quick Start Contributing Legacy Docker Compose Docker Compose is a tool for running multi container applications on Docker defined using the Compose file format. A Compose file is used to define how one or more containers that make up your application are configured. Once you have a Compose file, you can create and start your application with a single command: docker compose up . Note : About Docker Swarm Docker Swarm used to rely on the legacy compose file format but did not adopt the compose specification so is missing…
read the full compose overview →
About ergo
Actor model for Go. Build distributed systems without the distributed systems headache. Goroutines and channels work great until your system grows. Then come the mutexes, the race conditions, the service discovery configs, the retry logic, the connection pool management. Ergo replaces all of that with one model: isolated processes that communicate through messages, supervised automatically, addressable across any cluster. Inspired by Erlang/OTP. Zero external dependencies. Pure Go. The core idea in 30 seconds No locks. No race conditions. Sequential message handling is the guarantee. Why not just goroutines +…
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Frequently asked questions
Is compose or ergo more popular?
compose has 38,573 GitHub stars and ergo has 4,693. 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 (38,573 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ergo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.