head to head · open source
compose vs libfork
compose has 38,573 GitHub stars, 5,899 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. libfork has 901 stars, 46 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. compose leads on adoption by 4,181% (38,573 vs 901 stars). compose is written in Go under Apache-2.0; libfork is written in C++ under MPL-2.0. compose has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, libfork 5%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| compose | libfork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 901 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.9K | ⑂ 46 |
| 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 libfork if
- You want the libfork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and libfork 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 libfork
Welcome to libfork 🍴 A bleeding edge, lock free, wait free, continuation stealing coroutine tasking library. Now supplying 🌵! Libfork is primarily an abstraction for fully portable, strict, fork join parallelism. This is made possible without the use of any macros/inline assembly using C++20's coroutines. Ultra fine grained parallelism (the ability to spawn tasks with very low overhead) is enabled by an innovative implementation of an (almost) non allocating cactus stack utilizing segmented stacks . Libfork presents a cross platform API that decouples scheduling tasks (a customization point) from writing…
read the full libfork overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is compose or libfork more popular?
compose has 38,573 GitHub stars and libfork has 901. compose has the larger community by that measure.
Are compose and libfork free?
Both are open source. compose is licensed under Apache-2.0 and libfork under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between compose and libfork?
compose is written in Go and libfork in C++. 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 libfork?
Choose compose if you want the larger community (38,573 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose libfork if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.