head to head · open source
compose vs moon
compose has 38,573 GitHub stars, 5,899 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped yesterday. moon has 4,175 stars, 260 forks, 99 open issues and last shipped yesterday. compose leads on adoption by 824% (38,573 vs 4,175 stars). compose is written in Go under Apache-2.0; moon is written in Rust under MIT. compose has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, moon 6%. moon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | moon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 4.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.9K | ⑂ 260 |
| 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 moon if
- You want the moon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and moon 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 moon
moon moon is a repository m anagement, o rganization, o rchestration, and n otification tool for the web ecosystem, written in Rust. Many of the concepts within moon are heavily inspired from Bazel and other popular build systems. Documentation Contributing Code of conduct Why use moon? Working in a developer ecosystem can be very involved, especially when it comes to managing a repository effectively. Which package manager to use? Which language version to use? How to import packages? How to build code? So on and so forth. moon aims to streamline this entire process and provide a first class developer…
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Frequently asked questions
Is compose or moon more popular?
compose has 38,573 GitHub stars and moon has 4,175. compose has the larger community by that measure.
Are compose and moon free?
Both are open source. compose is licensed under Apache-2.0 and moon under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between compose and moon?
compose is written in Go and moon in Rust. 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 moon?
Choose compose if you want the larger community (38,573 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose moon if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.